Gideon Levy (Hebrew: גדעון לוי, pronounced [ɡidˈʔon leˈvi]; born 2 June 1953) is an Israeli journalist and author.

Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focus on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

[1] His father, Heinz (Zvi) Loewy, was born in the town of Saaz in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and earned a law degree from the University of Prague.

He spent six weeks as an illegal immigrant on the Panamanian-registered ship Frossoula, which was denied entry into Turkey and Palestine, and was permitted only temporary anchorage at Tripoli.

The group was then allowed to leave aboard another Panamanian-registered ship, Tiger Hill, which reached Palestine on 1 September.

[2][3][4] Levy's mother, Thea, from Ostrava, Czechoslovakia,[5] was brought to Palestine in 1939 in a rescue operation for children and placed in a kibbutz.

[1] His father opened a bakery in Herzliya with his sister and worked as a newspaper deliveryman and then an office clerk.

In 2004, Levy published a compilation of articles entitled Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation.

[11] With Haim Yavin, he co-edited Whispering Embers, a documentary series on Russian Jewry after the fall of communism.

[12] "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.'

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

"The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law", he wrote in an editorial.

[28] In his review of Levy's book The Punishment of Gaza, journalist and literary critic Nicholas Lezard called him "an Israeli dedicated to saving his country's honour", but said "there is much of the story he leaves out".

In its citation, the prize committee wrote that Levy "presents original and independent positions that do not surrender to convention or social codes, and in doing so enriches the public discourse fearlessly.

[36] In 2008, Arutz Sheva reported that Levy's article about the Jerusalem bulldozer attack was translated into Arabic for a Hamas website.

[40][41] Other public figures also cancelled their subscriptions, including Roni Daniel, the military and security correspondent for Israeli Channel 2.

A million immigrants from Russia, a third of them non-Jews, some of whom were also found to have a degree of alcohol and crime in their blood, were not a problem.

[46] Levy later apologised to those who were offended, but claimed that the real problem was that he had called Russian "immigrants" instead of "olim" and compared them to Africans.

[46] During the 2014 Gaza war, the chairman of the Likud Yisrael Beiteinu faction in the Knesset, Yariv Levin, called for Levy to be put on trial for treason.