Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy (Hebrew: גדעון לוי‎; born 1953) is an Israeli journalist and author. Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focus on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. A notable journalist on the Israeli left, Levy has been characterized as a "heroic journalist" by some, by others as a "propagandist for the Hamas".

Biography

Levy was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv.

Levy's father, Heinz (Zvi) Loewy, was born in the town of Saatz in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and earned a law degree from the University of Prague. He fled the Nazis in 1939 on a flight organized by two Slovakian Jews, together with 800 others. He spent six months on an illegal immigrant boat, the Frossoula, registered under a Panamanian flag, which was denied entry into Turkey and Palestine, and was permitted only temporary anchorage at Tripoli. He was then imprisoned in a detention camp at Beirut for six weeks. The group was then allowed to leave. During its journey, the ship was strafed by Royal Air Force planes, killing two passengers, after which the group was transferred to another ship, the Tiger Hill, which reached Mandate Palestine, where it ran aground at Tel-Aviv's Frischman Beach. His mother, Thea, was also from Czechoslovakia, and was brought to Palestine in a rescue operation for children in 1939, and was placed in a kibbutz. His father initially opened a bakery in Herzliya with his sister and worked as a newspaper deliveryman, but later found a job as an office clerk.

Gideon Levy (Dutch journalist)

Gideon Levy is a Dutch investigative journalist, producer and television presenter. He has won the Prix Europa in 2009.

Biography

Levy was born in 1970 and studied at the University of Amsterdam. He worked several years for broadcaster VPRO on several current affairs programmes, and for a while his own television programme, Levy and Sadeghi, with his colleague Bahram Sadeghi. Levy was one of the members of the De Jakhalzen, one of the standard items in the Dutch television programme De Wereld Draait Door.

Career

He is mostly active as an investigative journalist and programme maker. He makes documentaries for the Dutch public broadcaster AVRO on controversial subjects. Since 2010 he works with the TV production company BlazHoffski, producing documentaries such as Brandende Kwesties and a series on Israeli history, Israël: tussen droom en werkelijkheid ("Israel: between dream and reality").

The documentaries Levy works on are often on controversial subjects such as patents in the pharmaceutical industry, Israel,doping in bicycle racing, bonuses in the banking industry etc. The first part of a six-part documentary on the last Dutch war criminals (including a rare interview with the wife of Nazi collaborator Klaas Carel Faber is scheduled to air on Monday 18 June 2012 on AVRO television.