Gideon Spiro

Gideon Spiro was born in 1935 in Berlin

Spiro was born in Berlin in 1935. His father, the physician Samuel Spiro, lost his job under the Nuremberg Laws and settled in Jerusalem in 1938. Gideon, his mother and his younger brother followed, and the family lived in Kiryat Shmuel.

He was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. In 1951 he moved to Kibbutz Merhavia for his high school years. He later volunteered for the paratroopers and took part in the reprisal operations and the Mitla Pass jump in 1956.

In the 1960s he worked as a Knesset reporter for the business daily Sha'ar and then as a reporter for Al HaMishmar. In 1966 he went to West Germany on a Goethe Institute grant. After serving as a reservist in East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, he decided not to serve again in occupied areas with civilians.

He then reported from New York, covering the United Nations and Resolution 242, and covered the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. In 1970 he began political science studies at the University of Haifa. There he helped found the student group Yesh and edited the student paper Post Mortem.

He wrote for several Israeli newspapers and ran an independent political blog. He died in 2025.