Does Gideon Levy Support Israel?

Zach Mandel Feb 24, 2025 Updated Jul 27, 2026 4 min read

Short answer: As of July 2026, Gideon Levy does not support Israel's government, its occupation of the Palestinian territories, or its conduct of the Gaza war. He is a Jewish Israeli, born in Tel Aviv to refugee parents and a former IDF conscript, who calls himself a "patriotic Israeli," but he has publicly backed the Palestinian-led BDS boycott movement since around 2013, calls the current system "apartheid," and advocates dissolving it into one binational democratic state rather than defending it as it stands.

What Gideon Levy has actually said and done

1953-1982 (background): Levy was born in Tel Aviv to Jewish refugee parents, his father a German-Jewish lawyer who fled the Nazis in 1939 and his mother a Czech Jew brought to Mandate Palestine on a child rescue transport. He was drafted into the IDF in 1974, served as an Israel Army Radio reporter, worked as an aide to Labor leader Shimon Peres from 1978 to 1982, then joined Haaretz, according to his Wikipedia biography, in 1982.
2010: Levy published "The Punishment of Gaza" (Verso Books), a collection of dispatches criticizing Israeli policy toward Gaza and its 2008-09 war there.
December 16, 2018: In a Haaretz podcast, Levy said BDS is "not antisemitic" and that after opposing it for years he now sees boycott as "the only effective tool" to change Israeli policy, comparing it to the boycott of apartheid South Africa, a position also reported by the International Middle East Media Center.
November 9, 2023: After the October 7 Hamas attack, Levy wrote in Haaretz that Israel must reckon with its own failures toward Gaza or "another war awaits us," arguing decades of Israeli policy toward Gaza helped create the conditions for the attack, a stance he expanded on in a later Democracy Now! interview and one that drew accusations in Israeli media of excusing Hamas.
2024: Levy published "The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe," described by reviewers as one of the harshest Israeli-authored condemnations of Israel's Gaza war, and told Al Jazeera's "The Bottom Line" that Israel "has achieved nothing" with the war.
July 30, 2025: In a Haaretz opinion column, Levy wrote that Israel's campaign in Gaza is "not just war, it's genocide, and it's being done in our name," one of his most direct uses of the term genocide to describe Israeli conduct.
May 6, 2026: In a Haaretz column titled "Zionism Didn't Go Wrong, It Was Always Built This Way," Levy argued Israel's current conduct is a continuation of, not a deviation from, Zionism's founding logic, reaffirming that if Zionism means continued occupation, he is "not only not a Zionist, but anti-Zionist."
March 13, 2026: On Democracy Now!, Levy said Israel will not stop its wars and the occupation until the United States withdraws its support, continuing his advocacy for outside economic and diplomatic pressure on Israel.

Jewish identity and where he stands

Levy's Jewish and Israeli identity is not in dispute. He grew up in Tel Aviv, his family were Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe on both sides, and he served in the IDF as a young man before becoming an Israel Army Radio reporter and, later, an aide to Labor leader Shimon Peres. He has spent nearly four decades at Haaretz, much of it writing the "Twilight Zone" column documenting conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories, and he describes himself as a "patriotic Israeli." That biography is real and it explains why some readers assume he simply loves Israel with reservations.

The clearer part of the record is his politics. Levy describes Israel's system of separate laws for Jews and Palestinians as apartheid, argues the two-state solution is dead, and has said that if Zionism means continued occupation, he is anti-Zionist. His stated alternative is a single democratic state with equal rights and votes for Jews and Palestinians, not a continuation of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Since roughly 2013 he has publicly supported the BDS boycott movement, denying it is inherently antisemitic, a position well outside the Israeli mainstream that has drawn sharp criticism from watchdogs such as CAMERA. Since October 7, 2023, he has repeatedly framed the Gaza war as rooted in pre-existing Israeli policy, and in his July 2025 column he used the word "genocide," one of the most severe characterizations of Israeli conduct offered by any Israeli journalist writing in the mainstream Israeli press. Admirers, including press freedom and human rights circles, have called him a "heroic journalist," while critics have called him a purveyor of "anti-Israel poison."

The bottom line

Gideon Levy is a Jewish Israeli with deep personal roots in the country, but on the actual question people are asking, whether he supports Israel's policies, government, or conduct in Gaza, the documented record through July 2026 says no. He calls the current system apartheid, has backed BDS boycotts since around 2013, has used the word genocide to describe the Gaza campaign, and advocates dissolving Israel as a Jewish-majority state in favor of one binational democracy.

Support Israel directly

Not every public figure who grew up Israeli chooses to stand with Israel today, which is exactly why it matters when you do. If you want to show where you stand without ambiguity, our I Stand With Israel collection turns that support into something visible, worn with pride rather than argued in a column.

Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.