Gideon Levi: I Hate “Settlers,” and I’m Proud of It. By David Lev.

Gideon Levi: I Hate “Settlers,” and I’m Proud of It. By David Lev. Arutz Sheva 7, November 8, 2012.

Lev:

In an interview with business daily Globes, veteran Ha’aretz editor Gideon Levi talks about his feelings regarding Jews who have made their homes in Judea and Samaria. Bottom line: Levi hates them.

 

“It’s not just that they bother me. I actually have feelings of hatred towards them,” Levi proudly told Globes. “I am a very emotional person. They embarrass me, they mock me, they devalue me with the things they do, with their very presence.”

 

In the interview, Levi discussed his work as one of the most leftwing journalists at Israel’s leftwing daily, who has made a career of writing negative articles targeting Jews who embrace Zionism and the Land of Israel. “I was a good boy who did everything properly. In high school I was the most well-behaved kid in the world. But in my travels I began to write about the occupied territories and what I saw there,” said Levi, describing Judea and Samaria as some sort of far-off colony, instead of just a few miles away from his Tel Aviv home. “Over the years I have seen many terrible things, that have made me the journalist I am today.”

 

Levi said that, traveling through Judea and Samaria, that “something big” was happening – and he didn’t like it. “There was something dramatic and serious going on, and nobody was writing about it,” Levi said. “There grew up a phenomenon in Israel of sweeping things under the rug. Nobody was covering the occupation. Since I do not see myself as part of the choir and do not like to do what others do, I said to myself that if there is something major going on that no one else is covering, that is where I should be.”

 

Ironically, despite his protestations of anti-establishment independence, Levi has been employed for decades at Ha’aretz, the epitome of Israeli establishment journalism, and has won three European and international journalism awards.

 

And despite claims of being an objective journalist, Levi said that his attitude to Jews living in Judea and Samaria, and the way he writes about them, “is obviously a personal reaction. There are many things that I detest, and I do not hide it. I believe that they are immoral. There is no way I can find a way to communicate with them, to come to a meeting of the minds.”