committee wrote that Levy "presents original and independent positions that do not surrender to convention or social codes, and in doing so enriches the public discourse fearlessly." Criticism Levy has been criticized for being anti-Israeli and supporting Palestinian radicalism. "Is it wrong to ask of reporters in a country that is in the midst of a difficult war to show a little more empathy for their people and their country?" asked Amnon Dankner of the Maariv newspaper. Ben-Dror Yemini, the editor of the opinion page of Maariv, called Levy one of the "propagandists for the Hamas". Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, wrote "[One of] the current Israeli heroes [of the Hamas], from whom the Palestinians garner support for their ways, [is] Gideon Levy". In 2008, Arutz Sheva reported that Levy's article about the Jerusalem bulldozer attack was translated into Arabic for a Hamas website. In 2006, Gideon Ezra, Israel's former deputy Minister of Internal Security, suggested that the General Security Services should monitor Levy as a borderline security risk. In 2002, Israeli novelist Irit Linur set off a wave of subscription cancellations to Haaretz when she wrote an open letter to the paper cancelling her own subscription. "It is a person's right to be a radical leftist, and publish a newspaper in accordance with his world view... However Haaretz has reached the point where its anti-Zionism has become stupid and evil", she wrote. She also accused Levy of amateurism because he does not speak Arabic. Other public figures also cancelled their subscriptions, including Roni Daniel, the military and security correspondent for Israeli Channel 2. Levy himself joked that there is a thick file of anti-Levy cancellations in the Haaretz newsroom. In an open letter to Levy in 2009, Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua, formerly a supporter of Levy, described his comparison of Gazan-Israeli death tolls as absurd and questioned his motives. In 2013, Levy published an article about what he views as a disgraceful attitude towards African asylum seekers in Israel. In considering the reasons for this attitude, he wrote, "This time the issue is not security, Israel’s state religion. Nor are still talking about a flood of refugees, because the border with Egypt has been closed. So the only explanation for this disgraceful treatment lies in the national psyche. The migrants' color is the problem. A million immigrants from Russia, a third of them non-Jews, some of