There is no more important name in Israeli journalism than Gideon Levy, journalist for Haaretz and one of the most brutal, consistent, and solitary voices against the occupation of Palestine.
For over 30 years, his weekly columns have documented the daily humiliations, the structural violence, and the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people. He has traveled through every corner of Gaza and the West Bank, reporting what many inside Israel prefer not to see. In this conversation, Levy does not hedge: “At first, I saw an occupation. Then I understood it was apartheid. Today, what’s happening in Gaza is, without a doubt, genocide.”
For Levy, the occupation is not an excess or a mistake — it is the core of the Israeli project. He describes it as a system of total control — territorial, legal, military, economic, and symbolic — over a population with no rights, who are expected to be grateful simply for being allowed to live. “Israel never had any intention of allowing a Palestinian state. What it wants is land without people.” In the West Bank, he denounces a regime with two legal systems: one civil for Jewish settlers, and another military for Palestinians. “That’s apartheid. There’s no other word.”
In Gaza, Levy says, the plan is no longer to control — it’s to destroy. “It’s not just collective punishment. It’s selective but constant extermination. It’s about erasing a people from the map.” He accuses the Israeli military of applying a logic of annihilation against a besieged and starving population. “They bomb homes, hospitals, schools. There is no military objective. The objective is the Palestinian people.”
Levy is devastated by the role of the international community — but not surprised. “If this genocide isn’t stopped, it’s because the world is allowing it.” For him, there are no more excuses, no grey areas: “Silence is complicity.”
And still, he insists on speaking out. From within the system, at the heart of the regime, his voice remains a persistent rupture — a witness who refuses to be complicit.
