Gideon [Levy] is in his newspaper’s office in Tel Aviv, where I have just arrived to meet him.His father, he tells me, is from Sudetenland and he spoke German as a child.
But Gideon doesn’t care about Sudetenland, what he cares about is The Occupation. He wasn’t always like this, but when he started working for this paper “the more I understood that the occupation is brutal, criminal, and the more radical I became.”
Do you think that the nation of Israel is brutal by nature?
“No, totally not. Others are the same. But there is one thing that’s different from other nations, which is a DNA in the Israeli mentality, the belief that they are the Chosen People, which is a racist view, and this is something very deep in the DNA of the Israeli, of the Jew, that we are better than anybody, that we deserve everything, the kind of belief that Prime Minister Golda Meir had, that Jews can do anything they want, and this is in addition to the thought that we are the greatest victims of history. These are the very thoughts that make us believe that we have rights that others don’t have, and that therefore we can do anything. Out of these comes the demonization of Palestinians.”
Could we say that the Israelis and the Nazis are one and the same?
“No.”
Why not?
“You could make a comparison to the Nazis in the thirties. But that’s the most you can do, not more. Here there are no plans to annihilate other nations, no plans to rule over the world, no concentration camps. I prefer comparing Israel with South Africa during Apartheid.”
Is it ever going to change?
“Only if Israel pays for it. Only under pressure on the Israelis, economically or, God forbid, by bloodshed.”
Do you think Jews have always been like this, with this racist DNA?
“Certainly.”
In this kind of environment, I ask him, why doesn’t he just pack his suitcases, jump onto a plane, and simply leave this country?
“I’m an Israeli patriot,” he answers. Israel is very important for him, this is his place and, besides, he asks rhetorically: “What will I do in other places, write about tourism?”
Europe, as a rule, sides more with the Palestinians, while the United States sides more with the Israelis. What do you think is the reason for this?
“Europe is much more ideological, complex, intellectual. America is shallow, everything in black and white, and brainwashed.”
Under the intellectuals’ Rule of Generalization, Gideon should be stripped of his right to speak in public. This is never going to happen, of course, because Gideon Levy is practically the best source of information for all intellectuals with even the slightest interest in Israel.
Why, do you think, are the Europeans so interested in this land?
“Very complex. For one thing, you can’t ignore the past. In some European countries, I’m sure, and I’m talking about feelings they have in their sub-subconscious, there is this thinking: ‘if our victims are engaged in horrible acts perhaps it’s not that bad what we have done to them.’ It makes the Europeans feel better and it compensates for their guilty feelings. But it’s also true that Europe is more sensitive than America to human rights violations in general.”
We keep on talking, and Gideon tells me that he doesn’t speak Arabic. I ask him how can he write about the horrible things Israel is doing to the Palestinians, which he constantly does, if he doesn’t understand the language of his interviewees.
Gideon replies that his team includes Arabic speakers for those interviewees who don’t speak English or Hebrew. I mention to him that the people here speak in two languages, one amongst themselves and one with foreigners, and that if you don’t know their mother tongue they will sell you tall tales. Even Al-Jazeera is doing this, giving two very different viewpoints: One for the “brothers,” in Arabic, and one for Westerners, in English. But Gideon, who does not understand Arabic at all, claims that this is not the case. And when I ask him if he also reports on Palestinian human rights violations, he replies that what the Palestinians do is none of his business.
I have no clue how he can report on abuses of one side if he doesn’t even bother about the abuses of the other side. Violence, after all, many a time comes in circles: one shoots and the other shoots back, but if you fail to mention the first bullet and only report about the second, the second shooter turns into a plain murderer by the strokes of your pen, not because he really is.
What does he think of the settlers in Hebron?
“They are the worst. No doubt.”
His issue is not just the settlers.
“I think,” he says to me, “that the average Palestinian wants peace more than the average Israeli. I have no doubt about this.” Yet, despite his love for the Palestinians he doesn’t really know them. And he admits it: “All my friends are Israelis. I don’t have one Palestinian friend.”
This is sad. For so many years Gideon has championed the Palestinian cause, but not one Palestinian has befriended him, or he one of them. Obviously, despite what his articles may suggest, he really doesn’t care about the Palestinians, only about the Jews. He’s an Israeli patriot, as he says to me. He wants his Israel, his Jews, to be super-humans and reply to a bullet with a kiss. In short: he wants all the Jews to be Jesus and die on the cross.
There can be only one reason why he would want them to be a Jesus: Inside of this man’s heart, in its darkest corners, this Gideon is the biggest kind of Jewish racist that has ever existed. Jews must behave like super-humans because they are. And as long as they do not behave as a master Jesus race, he hates them. He is the strangest self-hating Jew you can find.