Gideon Levy, a journalist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, on Wednesday said he regretted appearing on the podcast of Jackson Hinkle, an American anti-Israel activist and supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who attended former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon.
Levy’s statement that “I should not have done it” follows criticism that by agreeing to appear on the podcast he had legitimized Hinkle.
Levy, who has accused Israel of apartheid and who penned an op-ed about Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza titled “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza, Then What Is It?” said he wasn’t aware of Hinkle’s “dark, antisemitic views,” as Levy called them.
“To my embarrassment, I had never heard of Hinkle before,” Levy, a veteran and senior investigative reporter for Haaretz, wrote about Hinkle, who has 2.9 million followers on X. Hinkle has been the subject of dozens of profile items in mainstream media, including one on CNN in September.
“The more I found out about him, the clearer it became that this is a person who spreads falsehoods, including fabricated and manipulated quotes from Haaretz,” wrote Levy, who also noted that Hinkle “fully identifies with Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Levy’s “first acquaintance” with Hinkle’s “real character” was after seeing Hinkle toting a rifle two days after the interview in Sanaa, Yemen. Hinkle was there as a guest of Houthi rebels, a proxy army of Iran.
The collaboration with Hinkle triggered many condemnations of Levy in Israel.
“Haaretz is often beyond the pale, which is why so few Israelis actually read it. But for their leading columnist, Gideon Levy, to sit down with arch-antisemite crank Jackson Hinkle, who attended Nasrallah’s funeral and supports and visits the Houthis, is a new, vile, low,” tweeted Michael Dickson, the executive director of the Israel branch of the StandWithUs pro-Israel group.
“Palestine has an unconditional right to armed resistance in the face of this genocidal occupation,” Hinkle wrote last year in a tweet encouraging Americans to support Hamas. He has tweeted the word “Hero” captioning a photo of slain Hamas terrorist Yahya Sinwar. Hinkle also called a critic of Palestinian terrorist a “Zio bitch.”
Many Jews regard the slur “Zio,” short for Zionist, as an antisemitic pejorative.
Hinkle reacted to Levy’s expression of regret with a post complimenting Levy on his “surprisingly accurate” commentary about “Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” as Hinkle put it.
“While I do applaud Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Ansar Allah for their courage, sacrifice and resistance in the face of a fundamentally anti-human aggressor, I categorically reject being labeled as ‘antisemitic.’ Lastly, in light of our mutual ‘belated understanding’ of one another, I wish to also express my deepest regret and sorrow for believing that you may have possessed an IQ above room temperature,” Hinkle wrote.