Gideon Levy - Journalism and Media Career

Journalism and Media Career

In 1974, Levy was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces where he served as a reporter for Israel Army Radio. From 1978 to 1982 he worked as an aide to Shimon Peres, then leader of the Israeli Labor Party. In 1982, he began to write for the Israeli daily Haaretz. In 1983–1987, he was an assistant to the editor-in-chief. Despite his coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict, he speaks no Arabic. He has written a column called "Twilight Zone" about the hardships of the Palestinians since 1988. In 2004, Levy published a compilation of articles entitled Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation. With Haim Yavin, he co-edited Whispering Embers, a documentary series on Russian Jewry after the fall of communism. He hosted A Personal meeting with Gideon Levy, a weekly talk show that was broadcast on Israeli cable TV on channel 3, and has appeared periodically on other television talk shows.

Levy has said that his views on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians developed only after joining Haaretz. "When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed," he said in an interview. "I would see settlers cutting down olive trees and soldiers mistreating Palestinian women at the checkpoints, and I would think, 'These are exceptions, not part of government policy.' It took me a long time to see that these were not exceptions – they were the substance of government policy."

In an interview, he said he doubts that any other newspaper in Israel apart from Haaretz would give him the journalistic freedom to publish the kind of pieces he writes.

On the issue of copyright violations in journalism, Gideon Levy voiced support for Johann Hari of The Independent, who was accused of plagiarism, while confirming that Hari had lifted quotes from Levy's newspaper column.