Gideon Levy - Journalist from Haaretz newspaper, Israel HARDtalk

problems are not solved. Half an hour away from here, there are two

million, three million Palestinians living under a brutal occupation and

as long as those beaches remain as peaceful as they are and the beaches

of Gaza continue to be full of ruins and dead bodies, this cannot go on

like this. It is really living in denial.

Does it bother you that the views you have appear to appeal to the

tiniest of tiny minorities inside this country?

Even now, you are exaggerating a bit. It is even less than this. I'm

not a politician and I am not looking for gaining a majority. I'm

writing what I believe in genuinely. This is my view and I will stick to

it as long as I can continue to express myself in this country. You

say that you will stick to it but we know that over the last few weeks,

as you have written about Israel's conduct in its military

confrontation with Hamas in Gaza, enormous numbers of people have been

infuriated. People around this city yell at you and make threats against

you. Are you prepared to live with that?

I do not know if it will go on like this but I will not leave this

place. Even now, you have to hire a

bodyguard if you are going to go into very public places. It seems to

me that this is a message, telling you that you do not have much of a

future in this country. What alternative do I have? I'm not

going to change my mind, I'm not going to shut my mouth and I'm not

going to leave this place. None of these are possibilities and so I

will stay here and do as much as I can. Let us continue this

conversation where your words are turned into newsprint, the offices

of Haaretz. I want to know what is in your mind when you write.

Do you set out to provoke, to inflame?

I do not think provoke is the right word. I want to try and shake

Israeli people out of their unbelievable indifference, apathy

and lack of any kind of moral judgement. I want to shake them one

way or the other with my very, very modest powers because I'm only one

journalist working for a small newspaper. I'm trying to do this but

if this creates anger then... It seems to me that there is

arrogance in what you do because you have said in the past, "My mission,"

and you use the word mission, "is to prevent Israelis from saying we did

not know what was happening in the occupied territories." Should

journalism have a mission? their behalf. For this, you do not

need Arabic. You know as well as I do that for good journalism, you can

do it with Hebrew, English and translators. Saying he does not

speak Arabic means nothing. I talk about people as human beings and

there are very few Israelis who talk of Palestinians like human beings.

Let us get into what you said, "No other war has turned my

stomach like this one has." And you have directed your condemnatory fire

particularly at the commanders of the Israeli military, leading

pilots in the Air Force, who you doing their jobs. Some

pilots in the Air Force, who you said were "perpetrating the

cruellest and most despicable of deeds, these, the finest of our

young military men." That is something which to so many Israelis

crossed a red line. First of all, I do not believe in

red lines. In times of war when things are still happening, I

thought and I still think that Israelis cannot live with this

luxury of not taking any kind of accountability towards what is being

done on their behalf. Let me quote to you one former

pilot, a self`appointed leftist, who responded in public to you, saying,

"It is infuriating to see Gideon Levy throw mud at those who are

doing their utmost to serve this country." And he said the

implication that military men, soldiers, should disobey orders they

disagree with is going to rebound on the left.

it may be soldiers refusing to close down Jewish settlements on occupied

territory and who use the same arguments that you use, that in the

end, soldiers should not follow orders that cross an ethical line

for them personally. There is a big difference between

evacuation of settlements and destruction and killing.

In your mind. No, no. In any moral standard,

killing and demolishing is not like evacuating, with all due respect.

And illegal by international law, by

local law. But when you see this massive destruction, especially in

the first days, from the air, someone has to be at least aware

that the pilot who sits in cockpit and sees those images and

pushes the button, he is not always aware of the outcome on the ground.

800 children and women killed is OK? 2,000, 3,000? When do you stop? Only

because they had orders? Only because they do not see the

They have no immunity. And I think They have no immunity. And I think

some of the pilots, most of the pilots, are very moral people and

that is exactly why I wrote it. I used the word arrogance earlier. I

wonder if you ever pause to wonder why so few Israelis, whether in

uniform or out, appear to have any sympathy with your argument? Could

it just be that in terms of this country, its security and its

future, you might just be wrong? Now I will give you an arrogant

answer. There are so many cases in history in which the very few were

the right and the history in which the very few were

period. You have used the word fascism. You have said,

past but now I think the time has come to use the word fascism for

what is happening in Israel today.". I have seen signs of fascism. I

still see them. As a disease, it is always good to find it as early as

possible and the first symptoms are here. How dare you say that to an

Israeli public with all of the collective memory that this country

has? And indeed yourself, the son of German and Czech refugees who just

managed to escape from Nazism? I see the symptoms. If some Israelis

were scared to go to demonstrate against this war, and I know so many

who were physically scared to go, if a leading leader of the Israeli

parliament is calling African asylum seekers cancer, if a leading figure

of the Likud Party is calling for me to be brought to court for treason

main concern, Stephen, is not that those are the first symptoms and my

main concern, Stephen, is not that we are fascist. I do not think we

are yet there. My main concern is that there is no`one to stop fascism

here. saying is so wrongheaded because you

are perversely looking at the wrong end of the problem.

Hamas, an organisation that is committed to the elimination of the

Jewish state, Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

That is in the minds of many Israelis a totalitarian ideology

that Israel has to confront. No doubt, no doubt. Hamas is not my

cup of tea. I did not vote for Hamas. But Hamas is a Palestinian

movement and I am much more concerned about Israeli society.

Israel always was free. Freedom is one of the strongest assets of

Israel, not. I'm trying to raise a different

voice. If you look at the reality today, I

have talked Jewish state of Israel. And in this

context for you to argue to Israelis that they should take a

context for you to argue to Israelis What will you get? The Finnish

government? The Swedish government? You will get Somalia. What is the

alternative? Peace with Hamas, with Fatah, with anyone who is there, or

to wait for all of those catastrophes to come and then really

there will be no path forward. I want to bring this back to the more

personal sense. You forged many of your ideas by travelling through the

occupied territory and watching occupation. I wonder if it might be

time for you, Gideon Levy, to spend more time travelling in your own

country, talking to your own compatriots. For example, maybe if

you went to a kibbutz today, the kibbutz where two men just a few

days ago were killed by Hamas rockets, men who have now left

widows and children behind, people who were not part of the war, who

were almost certainly leftists because they were in a kibbutz,

which is by and large of the left, and if you spoke to those families

or if you spoke to the mother of a boy who was killed by a Hamas rocket

just a few days before that, maybe you would develop a different sense?

I would and I did it again and again in this war.

I have been to the kibbutzim, I have been to these places. I have a lot

of empathy for those people. And there are so many Israeli

journalists who cover their sacrifice. And I cannot make the

comparison, with all due respect, with their suffering vis`a`vis the

suffering of Gaza. For me, the suffering of Gaza, which is on an

entirely different scale, is burning in my bones. I might even say more

because it is a bigger catastrophe. And those are human beings exactly

like the people in the south and their suffering has now gone on for

65 years and we cannot see the end of it. I cannot ignore this

suffering. And there are enough of my colleagues who cover and rightly

so the Israeli sacrifice. Let one journalist also cover the other

side. Let us talk about the politics of

this country. When I lived here not so long ago, the Labour Party was

the dominant force. It was the party of Peres. Now Labour struggles to

win more than a handful of seats in the elections. The left as a whole

has been reduced. I just wonder why you think that is and whether you

believe, frankly, there is any hope of reviving the left in this

country. The left was smashed after the lie that there was no

Palestinian partner. And the second intifada. After the exploding buses

and the line that there is no Palestinian partner. There were

question marks, how solid was it in the first place? With respect, if

one takes it away from the politicians but thinks about the

most respected leftist cultural figures, a writer, he says what has

undermined the left more than anything else is what happened after

the withdrawal from Gaza. Because finally, Sharon gave the

Palestinians what they wanted in Gaza, which was the withdrawal of

Israeli forces. You run your own affairs, is the message. Hamas was

in control. The rockets began. In outside the jail, rather than

inside. a cage would throw flowers at

Israel, wait for the world to save them? How

can the world expect this? I many Israelis would say, listen to

Gideon Levy, he And he enjoys the freedom of

expression that Israel offers. He enjoys the prosperity that the state

has delivered to Jewish people, just like him. Anti` `` and he mouths

off, criticising modern`day Zionism without which he would not exist.

Should I be grateful for this? This should go without saying. To be

grateful for Israel that lets me speak, are we are saying that it

must be an exception? Now they are saying that you betrayed the nation

that gave you so much. For example, you now say to the international

community, please, put sanctions on Israel. Boycott my country. Because

that is the only way we are get change. To most Israelis, that

is, frankly, a betrayal. much bigger betrayal is this

military operation in Gaza. It created much more damage to the

image of Israel than all my articles and speeches altogether.

due respect to my articles, you cannot even compare. So those who

really care about community to punish Israel

collectively? It is the only wake`up call for the Israelis, to understand

what is being done. Then we will what is being done. Then we will

start to pay for the occupation. I think Israel should pay for the

operation. I think Israel should be punished for the occupation. The

occupation is an ongoing crime with us week after week. It is not about

one detail or another detail, it is one detail or another detail, it is

about the basic situation. Which one people is governing by brutal force

another people for 46 years. Someone has to be accountable for this. And

the change will not come from within. Sorry that I

back to the personal level. I want to talk about your own

have sons in this country. Israeli sons. You