Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist and author who has been a columnist and editorial board member for the Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” since 1982. Born in Tel Aviv to Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia, his background initially positioned him as a typical member of the Israeli founding generation. Early in his career, he even served as an aide to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. However, his Jewish identity and love for Israel eventually evolved into a profound concern for the nation’s moral direction, transforming him from an establishment elite into Israel’s most controversial and enduring systemic critic.
Levy’s achievements in journalism are centered on his fearless reporting of the truth in the Occupied Territories, most notably through his column “The Twilight Zone,” which he has maintained for over thirty years. The column provides a meticulous record of the daily lives and hardships of Palestinian civilians under occupation, filling a void in mainstream Israeli media. For this moral courage, he has received numerous international and domestic honors, including the Olof Palme Prize and the Sokolov Prize, Israel’s highest journalism award. He is widely regarded as the “conscience” of Israeli society, even as his views frequently make him a target for domestic ultranationalists.
Levy’s support for Palestine is manifested in his decades of investigative work on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, where he remains nearly the only mainstream Israeli journalist consistently documenting the details of Palestinian suffering. This long-term field observation gives his statements immense impact: he openly condemns Israeli policies as “apartheid” and pointedly argues that Israeli society exists in a state of “moral blindness,” maintaining the occupation through the dehumanization of others. He not only defends Palestinian dignity on the international stage but also asserts that if Israel is to survive as a democracy, it must completely end the occupation and recognize Palestinian rights. His writing serves as both a protest against atrocities and a call for Israeli society to awaken from its collective political apathy.