Today’s edition of the perennially essential, always excellent Electronic Intifada website carries a great interview with a brave voice of Israeli journalism, Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy. The interview conveys Levy’s trademark stoic timbre and his matter-of-factly excavations and denunciations of human tragedies and horrors.

A must-read from start to finish, a couple of samples:

On the role of the Israeli media in the decades of conflict:

There is an enormous historic role that the Israeli media is playing. The Israeli media, which is a free media, free of censorship, free of governmental pressure, has been dehumanizing the Palestinians, demonizing them. Without the cooperation of the Israeli media, the occupation would not have lasted so long…

… It’s a free democracy, the media could play any role but it has chosen to play this role. The main thing is about the flow of information. It is so one-sided, so much propaganda and lies and ignorance.

More pessimistically, on the recent Obama/Netenyahu kerfufles:

… I’m afraid [the Obama administration’s] main goal now is to get rid of Netanyahu. And if this is the case, it will not lead anywhere. Anyone who will replace him will be more of the same, just nicer. It will be again this masquerade of peace process, of photo opportunities, of niceties which don’t lead anywhere. From this point of view, I prefer a right-wing government. At least, what you see is what you get.

The irony here (one of so many) is that the same comments and views (and pretty much the entire interview) that are routinely available to Israeli readers (those who choose to look for them at any rate), would be virtually unpublishable in most mainstream US media outlets i.e. precisely where they are most needed…