2017 Edward Said Memorial Lecture

ESML

25 Nov

This was the 13th year of this important annual series of Adelaide lectures inspired by the work of the late Palestinian public intellectual and post-colonial theorist, Professor Edward Said.

In 2017, we also combined the annual Lecture with a 3-day Symposium, Palestine and the West, held at the University of Adelaide.

Speaker: Gideon Levy

JOURNALIST, HAARETZ NEWSPAPER

Lecture title:

THE FIRST 50 YEARS: ISRAELI SOCIETY AND THE OCCUPATION

SATURDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2017, 5:30PM-7:00PM

ELDER HALL, THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE,
NORTH TERRACE, ADELAIDE SA

Tickets: $20 General Entry / $15 AFOPA Members

#EdwardSaidMemorialLecture #ESMLadelaide

About Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist, writing opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz often focusing 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".

Levy was born in 1953 in Tel Aviv. In 1974, Levy was drafted into the IDF, where he served as a reporter for Israel Army Radio. From 1978 to 1982 he worked as an aide to Shimon Peres, then leader of the Israeli Labor Party. In 1982, he began to write for the Israeli daily Haaretz. In 2004, Levy published a compilation of articles entitled Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation. He has hosted A Personal meeting with Gideon Levy, a weekly talk show that was broadcast on Israeli cable TV and has appeared periodically on other television talk shows.

Levy has said that his views on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians developed only after joining Haaretz.

"When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed," he said in an interview. "I would see settlers cutting down olive trees and soldiers mistreating Palestinian women at the checkpoints, and I would think, 'These are exceptions, not part of government policy.' It took me a long time to see that these were not exceptions – they were the substance of government policy."

Levy defines himself as a "patriotic Israeli". He criticizes what he sees as Israeli society's moral blindness to the effects of its acts of war and occupation. He has referred to the construction of settlements on private Palestinian land as "the most criminal enterprise in [Israel's] history". In 2007, he said that the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, then under Israeli blockade, made him ashamed to be an Israeli.

Levy supports unilateral withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories without concessions.

"Israel is not being asked 'to give' anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return – to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity."

Levy used to support the two-state solution, but he argues that it has become untenable, and he now supports one-state solution. He supports boycotting Israel, saying it is "the Israeli patriot's final refuge". Levy has said that economic boycott is more important, but that he also supports academic and cultural boycott.

Published works

Twilight Zone – Life and Death under the Israeli Occupation. 1988–2003. Tel Aviv: Babel Press, 2004
The Punishment of Gaza, Verso Books, 2010

Awards

2003: Leipzig Media Award
2007: Euro-Med Journalist Prize for Cultural Dialogue
5 May 2012: Peace Through Media Award at the eighth annual International Media Awards
7 January 2016: Olof Palme Prize, shared with Palestinian pastor Mitri Raheb, for their "fight against occupation and violence"