Is Gideon Levy The Most Hated Man in Israel or Just the Most Heroic?
That’s the question The Guardian posed in a profile published in September 2010 of Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. They could update and republish it today--with the same question.
Consider the subjects of his latest blistering columns in Israel’s liberal “Haaretz” newspaper.
“18 West Bank Shepherding Communities Have Been Recently Erased. This One Might Be Next”
“A Palestinian Teen Was Standing on the Street When Israel Troops Shot Him Dead,” May 11, 2024
“In the West Bank, Not Even Ambulances Are Immune to Deadly Israeli Army Gunfire.” May 4, 2024
“Israeli Media Has Tears Only for Israeli Children”
“Let Israel’s Leaders Get Arrested for War Crimes”. May 5, 2024
Imagine a columnist for a major American daily, even attempting to submit such barbed pieces day after day. He’d be fired within a week, condemned as a raving anti-Semite.
Born in Tel Aviv seventy years ago, Gideon Levy is no anti-Semite. He is a multi-award-winning Jewish reporter who believes fervidly in Israel—but is outraged by the country that Israel has become.
He’s been controversial since he joined Haaretz in 1982. As Israel moved to the right and became increasingly brutal with the Palestinians, Levy made that inhumanity his focus. For twenty-five years, he’s turned out a weekly Twilight Zone feature covering Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. He also regularly weighs in with blunt, highly critical editorials condemning that occupation.
And he’s kept doggedly on—even though each year, his readers are less troubled by what Israeli authorities and settlers are doing to the Palestinians. Many Israelis came to see him as a “traitor.” At one point, Haaretz even hired a bodyguard for him.
I met Gideon in Israel a couple of years ago, strolling along the beaches of Tel Aviv, filled with Israelis young and old, enjoying the Mediterranean Sea and the sun—just a short drive away from the misery and despair that Gideon regularly describes in Gaza and the West Bank. There was nothing to make him think things would change, he said. He saw only a dark future ahead.
I asked what kept him going. Was his determination to chronicle the Palestinian tragedy just a Quixotic attempt to defend a losing cause?
He nodded, “I know,” he said with a bitter smile, “Even my friends are no longer reading my reports. But I’m not going to stop. I can’t. Someone has to bear witness.”
He was horrified by October 7 and the Hamas attacks. But over the following months, as it became evident that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza was turning into mass slaughter, Gideon was appalled. Someone had to bring the traumatized country back to its senses. On March 13, 2024, he wrote:
“Hamas's vicious, barbaric attack on Israel does not change the basic situation in which we live: of a people that has been harassing and tyrannizing another people in different ways and at varying intensities for over a century now….
”It’s time to return to reality. It's time to go back to seeing the whole picture, to reactivate the conscience and the moral compass that were shut off and stored away on October 7, and to see what has happened since then to us and, yes, to the Palestinians.
“It's time to remove the blindfolds you put on, not wanting to see and not wanting to know what we're doing to Gaza because you said that Gaza deserves it and its catastrophes no longer interest you.
“You were angry, you felt humiliated, you were stunned, you were terrified, you were shocked, and you grieved on October 7. This was fully justified. It was a huge shock for everyone.
“Israel's responsibility for the fate of Gaza and its guilt did not change on that terrible day. It is not the only guilty party and does not bear full responsibility, but it has a decisive role in Gaza's fate.”
He wrote one of his most moving columns on May 12th, 2024, Israel’s Memorial Day.
All Stand at Attention to Remember Them All – Israelis and Palestinians.
“I shall remember them all Monday. I shall remember Pvt. Gideon Bachrach, after whom I am named. I will stand at attention during the Memorial Day sirens to honor his memory and the memory of all those who died in Israel's wars. I will think about the people who were slaughtered at the Nova music festival and in the communities along the border with Gaza and about hostages and the soldiers who were killed in Gaza. But at the same time, I cannot help but think about the victims of Israel's hostilities, the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank. I will also stand at attention in memory of them.
"The people of Israel will remember their sons and daughters" – and this year especially, it is obligatory to remember also the tens of thousands of sons and daughters on the other side. It is impossible not to mourn "the beauty of youth, the heroic passion, the sacred will and the self-sacrifice of those who perished in the heavy battle" – including theirs. Many of the tens of thousands of Gaza's dead, too, had the beauty of youth and heroic passion and sacred will and self-sacrifice. May the people of Israel also remember them.
They have no Memorial Day, and there is no one to keep their memory alive. Many of them do not even have a grave. They were buried in mass graves on traffic islands or beneath the ruins of their homes. Whole families erased, 15,000 children killed. How is it possible to stand at attention this Memorial Day to honor our dead and not think, even for a moment, about their dead, too?”
“This is a bad year for Israel,” he said on Al Jazeera TV in an interview on May 23rd. “But, maybe this bad year will teach Israel a lesson. Israelis will start to look at themselves and not blame the whole world for what’s going on.
“The notion now in Israel, as usual, is that the whole world is against us, the whole world is anti-Semitic, and let’s get together, we the victims of the world…
“An Israeli should start to ask himself, where is my responsibility? How come all this is happening? Is it only the world’s blame? Or maybe there were war crimes in Gaza? Maybe the people responsible should be brought to justice…But are they asking?
“Not yet; the Israeli media is contributing a lot to this denial. it’s a fatal denial. Israel society is living in total denial.
“The Israeli media, in my view, is the greatest collaborator with the occupation--the apartheid--by not telling the whole truth. This is the reason why this discourse is still a blame game against the world. I would love to see one discussion, one debate in that Israeli media in which the question would be raised: did we create crimes in Gaza or not? This is not even asked.
“We are witnessing a historical period. Things are changing rapidly… You have the campuses in the U.S., you have the international courts in the Hague, you have the recognition of certain European countries… Each is not enough, but all of them together may create a new reality.
“Israel and the United States are feeling pressed, but they are not being pressed enough. For the United States, it's not enough because you see the American policy--they still arm Israel. They were warning Israel not to enter Rafa, and here we are in Rafa, with 48% of the homes already demolished with daily fighting and a bloodbath there and the Americans do nothing….
“If Israel doesn’t change its policy. It is going to lose the whole battle, not only the military battle. Israel is a pariah state now.
“Do Israelis want to live in a pariah state?”