Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author who has been a columnist and editorial board member for Haaretz since 1982. Born in Tel Aviv to Czech Jewish refugees, he served as an aide and spokesman for former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the late 1970s. Over the following decades, his reporting on the Israeli occupation transformed him into one of Israel’s most prominent—and controversial—political commentators.
Levy’s reporting focuses on the Occupied Territories, most notably through his long-running Haaretz column, “The Twilight Zone,” which has documented the daily lives and hardships of Palestinians under occupation for over thirty years. For his work, he received the Olof Palme Prize in 2015 and the Sokolov Prize, Israel’s top journalism award, in 2021. While widely cited internationally, his columns routinely draw fierce criticism from Israeli political figures and the public.
Levy remains one of the few mainstream Israeli journalists who regularly conducts field reporting in Gaza and the West Bank. He explicitly characterizes Israeli policies in the territories as apartheid and frequently criticizes Israeli public opinion for ignoring Palestinian suffering. He argues that Israel cannot sustain a functioning democracy while maintaining the occupation, calling for a complete withdrawal from the Palestinian territories and the full recognition of Palestinian rights.