Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv

Levy was born in Tel Aviv in 1953. His father, Heinz (Zvi) Loewy, was a lawyer from Saaz in the Sudetenland who fled the Nazis and reached Palestine on the refugee ship Tiger Hill. His mother, Thea, came from Ostrava in a rescue operation for children, and his grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust.

The family lived in poverty at first, then more comfortably after German reparations arrived. Levy attended Ironi Alef High School in Tel Aviv. As a teenager his political views were mainstream.

He was drafted into the IDF in 1974 and worked as a reporter for Army Radio. From 1978 to 1982 he was an aide and spokesman for Labor Party leader Shimon Peres.

Levy began writing for Haaretz in 1982 and later served as a deputy editor. Since 1988 he has written the weekly column Twilight Zone on the lives of Palestinians, and in 2004 he published a book collecting these columns. He has also hosted a weekly television talk show and teaches at colleges.

His writing has won several awards and has also drawn criticism from other journalists and public figures. In 2021 he received the Sokolov Award. He lives in Ramat Aviv with his wife, Swedish journalist Catrin Ormestad.