Ari Shavit

Shavit was born in Rehovot in 1957.[1] His great-grandfather, Herbert Bentwich, was a prosperous British lawyer who headed an Anglo-Jewish delegation to the Holy Land in 1897.[3] Elliott Abrams recounts that the visit inspired most of Bentwich’s children to make aliyah and that Bentwich followed them in the 1920s.[3]

Shavit served as a soldier in Operation Litani and subsequently spoke to reporters about abuse of Arabs and looting that he said he had witnessed.[5] His army service also included work as a guard in a Gaza prison, an experience that helped lead him into the peace movement.[1] He became active in Peace Now, studied psychology and philosophy at the Hebrew University, and wrote for the student newspaper Pi Ha’aton.[5]

After completing his degree, Shavit joined Dov Alfon and Eyal Erlich in approaching Nahum Barnea, then editor of Koteret Rishit, to offer their services as reporters.[5] When the magazine later closed amid financial difficulties, Shavit left journalism to work with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, where he served for a period as chair.[5] Following occasional contributions to Haaretz, he began writing there regularly in 1995 and later became a columnist and member of its editorial board.[5][2]

Long interviews, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, became a distinctive part of his work.[5] He often spent many hours with interviewees over repeated meetings rather than relying on a single conversation.[5] His journalism also appeared in The New York Review of Books, as Elliott Abrams notes in his review of My Promised Land.[3]

Shavit was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Oslo process.[7] In his 1997 article “Why We Hate Him: The Real Reason,” he reconsidered the hopes surrounding Oslo and criticized the Israeli left’s response to Benjamin Netanyahu.[7] He described the early-1990s outlook as a “messianic craze,” in which Israelis had imagined that “the end of history, the end of wars, the end of the conflict” was near.[7] Having spent time accompanying Netanyahu, Shavit portrayed him as thoughtful and responsible and connected hostility toward him with disappointment in the peace process.[11]

National-security questions were another focus of Shavit’s reporting.[8] In 2012, he conducted an extensive discussion with an anonymous Israeli “decisionmaker,” identified in a contemporary analysis as Ehud Barak, about the rationale for a possible preemptive strike on Iran.[8] The discussion addressed the possibility that Israel could lose its military ability to stop Iran, the importance of Israeli self-reliance in security matters, and the anticipated difficulty and cost of containing a nuclear-armed Iran.[8]

Shavit’s 2013 memoir, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, combined personal narrative with a history of Israel and Zionism.[4] Published by Spiegel & Grau, it drew on family history, interviews, historical documents, diaries, letters, and Shavit’s own experiences.[6][4] Its narrative extends from early Zionist efforts through the 2011 social protests and contemporary debates over Iran.[4] Abrams describes the book, first published in English, as both a personal account shaped by Shavit’s family and views and a chronological history of the Yishuv, Israel’s founding and wars, and the challenges that followed 1973.[3]

The book begins with the 1897 journey of Shavit’s ancestor and proceeds chronologically across the Zionist century through portraits of individual participants.[3][4] Its interviews include Yosef Tulipman, director general of the Dimona nuclear reactor from 1965 to 1973; peace leader Yossi Sarid; religious-Zionist activist Yehuda Etzion; and Shas leader Aryeh Deri.[12] The Tulipman conversation was presented as his first and last interview and as a turning point in the narrative.[12]

Abrams highlights the book’s use of individual portraits to explore Zionism as a pursuit of survival, rather than simply an ideological choice.[3] He recounts its description of Ein Harod, founded in 1921, where residents cleared rocks and swamps, planted crops, and built communal facilities under harsh conditions.[3] In the spring of 1926, they stopped work early to hear violinist Jascha Heifetz perform in their remote quarry.[3]

In an essay adapted from the book, Shavit celebrated modern Jewish sovereignty as a major achievement of Zionism while criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its socioeconomic structure.[6] His formulation combined an acknowledgment of flaws with an affirmation of Jewish national achievement: “We had to come here, and once we came, we did wonders.”[6] In the same essay, he contrasted approximately 50,000 Jews living in the Holy Land in 1897 with a Jewish population in Israel that had exceeded six million at the time of writing.[6]

Shavit’s reflections on peace also combined criticism of Israeli policy with skepticism about the peace movement’s assumptions.[3] Abrams quotes him as arguing that the Israeli left was right to regard the occupation as a moral, demographic, and political disaster, but naïve to assume that because peace was necessary it was therefore feasible.[3] In a reproduced interview excerpt, Shavit described a Jewish national home as a profound existential need and argued that this need had made the first Zionist founders “blind to the existence of others.”[13]

During a 2015 UK campus tour, more than 500 students attended Shavit’s events in Birmingham, Cambridge, London, Leeds, and Oxford.[14] He discussed Israeli current affairs, Jewish peoplehood, and peace for Israelis and Palestinians.[14] After leaving Haaretz and Channel 10 in 2016, he returned to journalism in 2019 as a weekly columnist for Makor Rishon.[10][9] By 2023, he was also writing twice monthly for Yediot Aharonot and appearing regularly as a panelist on Channel 13.[9]

His later political writing included the Ynet opinion article “Far-right will drive Israelis to the streets en masse,” published on December 8, 2022.[15] In his Hebrew book L’hatzil et Yisrael (Saving Israel), he advocated a unified Zionist center and a synthesis of Labor Zionist and Jabotinsky Zionist traditions.[9]

For Sha’at Emet (“A Moment of Truth”), Shavit accompanied Naftali Bennett for about six months and collected approximately 100 hours of conversation.[16] The 272-page book was published by Kinneret Zmora Dvir, whose financing did not include funding from Bennett’s political party.[16] A 2026 account of the book also reported Shavit’s plans for further books about Israeli politicians.[16]

My Promised Land received the inaugural Natan Fund book award in 2013 and spent six weeks on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.[2] Martin Kramer’s essay reports that the award, announced in May 2013, included $35,000 for promotion and publicity and that the book appeared on the newspaper’s 2013 notable-books list.[2]

The book was rated the number-one book of 2013 by The Economist and received a prominent favorable review in The New York Times’ Sunday book review.[13] Thomas Friedman praised Shavit as “one of a handful of experts whom I’ve relied upon to understand Israel.”[13] Its broad narrative brought together Zionist settlement, Jewish immigration, wars, economic growth, the peace process, and continuing security threats.[3][4]

Shavit’s reputation as an interviewer rested partly on the time he devoted to understanding his subjects.[5] Nahum Barnea defended his patience and sustained engagement with interviewees, while former Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari praised him as an excellent interviewer and polished magazine writer.[5]

Shavit’s interviews and political commentary drew recurring criticism.[5] After his March 1988 interviews with Arab leaders, Samih al-Qasim and Muhammad Abu Nimer accused him of distorting or omitting remarks, including Abu Nimer’s support for recognizing Israel; Shavit denied their claims.[5] His 1997 portrayal of Netanyahu also provoked criticism, while a 2009 article warning about Tzipi Livni generated debate over its reliance on roughly a dozen unnamed sources.[11][17] Critics of his interviewing style argued that he gave politicians too much room to present their views without difficult questioning.[5]

The “Lydda 1948” chapter of My Promised Land, published in The New Yorker before the book’s release, became a focus of historical dispute over events during the War of Independence.[3] Shavit described a massacre, including an attack on a mosque that he said killed seventy civilians, drawing on conversations with Israeli veterans recorded twenty years earlier.[18] Kramer argues that other interviews with the same veterans described a two-sided battle and that testimony contradicted Shavit’s account of the killing of Arabs assigned to bury the dead.[2][18] Abrams likewise criticizes Shavit’s presentation, framing the dispute as whether the deaths and residents’ departure resulted from a planned massacre or wartime violence and confusion.[3]

In 2016, Danielle Berrin alleged that Shavit had behaved aggressively toward her during a 2014 interview in Los Angeles.[19] Shavit said he had understood the interaction as flirtation and apologized for a misunderstanding; Berrin rejected that characterization and said she had feared for her safety.[19] After a second allegation from an unnamed former J Street employee, he resigned from Haaretz and Channel 10, accepted “full moral responsibility” for past behavior, and said he intended to make amends.[10] The Times of Israel reported that he indicated he did not recall the second incident.[20]

Two further women made allegations in 2017, and the 92nd Street Y removed an advertised appearance from its website.[21] Shavit did not deny their accounts in an email response and said he had left public life for reckoning and self-reflection.[21] In 2018, a woman identifying herself as his daughter’s former partner alleged that he had touched her neck and tried to kiss her; Shavit denied both actions and called her description entirely inaccurate.[22]