Veteran journalist Dan Margalit has criticized extreme-left Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy for questioning why IDF soldiers shot an armed terrorist who approached them.

Margalit wrote, “A Palestinian with a knife approached the checkpoint, and Palestinian mouthpiece Gideon Levy wonders why – because she is a good student and wanted to study abroad, so it’s unlikely that she wanted to attack a soldier. Really?”

Levy had written in an article that “It’s unclear what motivated Sawsan Mansour, an 18-year-old honors student who dreamed of studying law in New York, to wave a knife at a checkpoint. Border Police officers who ‘feared an immediate threat to their lives’ killed her.”

Levy opened his column by writing: “The two horrified parents stood on either side of the checkpoint, with their daughter’s body between them, unable to look at it. They couldn’t even know for sure that the body laying on the street was indeed their daughter. Sawsan Mansour bled to death.”

“No playwright could have invented a stronger dramatic scene: Parents on either side of a checkpoint and their daughter’s body between them. The parents were not permitted to approach it. Sawsan’s body was placed in a black nylon bag and removed from the location.

“Only a blood stain remained on the street when the father — only he at first — was finally allowed to enter the checkpoint. A member of the Israeli security forces showed him a picture of the dead girl’s face on his phone. Now there is no doubt in his heart: It was his daughter, Sawsan.”

Despite working for an Israeli newspaper, Levy is famous around the world for his extreme hatred for his home country. He has frequently been accused of treason and Hamas has even considered his articles sympathetic enough to share them on its own websites.