Gideon Kutz

Gideon Kutz died in Paris on 20 September 2026 at the age of 78. According to his family, speaking to Ynet entertainment editor Ran Boker, he had felt unwell for about a year and a half and was hospitalised intermittently; only in early August 2026 was he diagnosed with a rare lymphoma that is difficult to detect. The disease progressed rapidly and his condition prevented treatment. Israeli outlets including Ynet, ice, Channel 14, N12/mako, Walla and i24NEWS reported the death the same day. Kan News issued a tribute describing him as a symbol of Kol Israel and Kan foreign broadcasting in Europe for four decades. He is survived by his wife, Yaffa Ieron-Kutz, their daughter Orit and their son Ari. Details of funeral or memorial arrangements were not fully public in the first day of reporting.

Gideon Kutz was born on 12 July 1948 in Lodz, Poland, into a family shaped by the Holocaust and by resistance to Nazi occupation. His father, Alexander Kutz, an agronomist by training, had commanded partisans in the forests of Ukraine, served as a Red Army officer and later worked as a senior employee of the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva while also serving as an IDF officer. His mother, Miriam, survived the Tuchyn ghetto; her father, Getzel Schwarzman, had led the ghetto uprising there, and Gideon carried that ancestral name in family memory.

After a period in Warsaw the family immigrated to Israel in 1957. Kutz attended Alliance High School in Ramat Aviv, completed a science-track matriculation, chaired the student council and worked on the school newspaper. He played basketball for Hapoel Tel Aviv and performed on stage at the Jerusalem Theatre and the Khan Theatre. As an IDF officer he served in Military Intelligence research and in the financial adviser unit to the chief of staff, and he fought on the southern front during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Kutz chaired the student union and completed a B.A. in economics and international relations (1971), an M.B.A. (1974) and an M.A. in communication (1976). He later studied at the Academy of International Law in The Hague, the European University Institute in Florence and the Paris higher school of journalism (foreign correspondent track).

In 1978 he moved to Paris for doctoral work and in 1980 completed with distinction a doctorate in information and communication sciences at the Sorbonne. His thesis examined the origins and evolution of the Hebrew press in Europe. In 1997 he received a French state doctorate for that body of research, presented in connection with President Jacques Chirac. His scholarly publications include La naissance de la presse hebraique (1993), a two-volume Lille edition of La presse hebraique en Europe (1997), The Hebrew and Jewish Press in Europe (2006), and Hebrew monographs on the history of Hebrew and Jewish journalism published in Israel.

Kutz began as a student satirist at Pi Ha'aton and wrote cabaret and broadcast comedy, including material for Hanna Laslo and Miki Kam, before turning to news. He wrote a satirical column for Davar from 1975, served as Davar's Paris correspondent from 1977, and continued with the paper until its closure in 1996. From 1979 he contributed to Galei Tzahal. In 1986 he joined Kol Israel; he later became Channel 1's European correspondent and, from 2001 to 2007, Channel 2's Europe correspondent. After Kan was established he remained Europe correspondent and commentator. From 2010 he was formally Maariv's Paris correspondent, and he also wrote for Yedioth Ahronoth, Globes and other outlets while appearing on France 24, i24, Radio France, BFM and in L'Arche and Courrier International.

His reporting spanned Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eastern European revolutions, the Yugoslav wars, the first Chechen war, Middle East peace diplomacy from Madrid onward, Mandela's inauguration, Iran's 2009 election protests, the Arab Spring, European terror attacks, Iran nuclear talks, Ukraine and Crimea, and the Yellow Vest protests in Paris. In 2002 he was isolated and expelled from Beirut after covering a Francophonie summit with Chirac's pool. In 2008 he alone among Israeli journalists accompanied Sarkozy to Damascus. He spent five years as president of the Foreign Press Association in France and later became honorary president; he was also vice-president of the French Union of Cinema Journalists and a FIPRESCI festival juror.

Academically he lectured in journalism at the Hebrew University (1992 to 1994), then from 1994 rose at Paris 8 to full professor of communication and culture, leading Hebrew and Jewish culture research units and editing REEH and later Kesher. He received the Brit Ivrit Olamit Ben Yehuda medal twice (2003, 2011) and French government excellence research grants from 2007 to 2011.

Kutz married the journalist and photographer Yaffa Ieron-Kutz. The couple moved to Paris together in 1978 for doctoral studies and raised their two children there. Their daughter, Dr Orit Kutz, is a sociologist specialising in digital innovation in cultural industries, a filmmaker and screenwriter, and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. Their son, Ari Kutz, a graduate of Paris Dauphine University, works as a senior innovation adviser. Yaffa Ieron-Kutz has long written for La'isha and has reported from Paris for Ynet. The family remained based in the French capital while Gideon continued to travel extensively as a foreign correspondent.

Kutz combined a commitment to Israeli public broadcasting with a scholarly insistence that the history of Hebrew and Jewish journalism belongs inside the wider history of world media. Colleagues and obituaries described him as curious, knowledgeable and willing to enter closed or hostile reporting environments, including Arab capitals and Iran, in order to bring European and Middle Eastern stories to Israeli audiences. His academic writing stressed the personal motives and professional practice of journalists and the systemic study of media, and he worked to integrate models drawn from Hebrew press history into Israeli communication research. As a satirist earlier in his career he treated political life with humour; as a senior correspondent he was known for blunt questions to leaders, including asking Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Paris in 2001 whether he would meet Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon for peace talks without preconditions.

For Israeli listeners and viewers, Kutz was for decades one of the defining voices of European news on Kol Israel, Channel 1, Channel 2 and Kan. For scholars, his books and the journal Kesher remain central to the study of Hebrew and Jewish press history in Europe. French and Israeli tributes after his death emphasised the bridge he formed between Poland, Israel and France: a Polish-born Israeli who made Paris his base for more than forty years as correspondent, professor, film critic and editor. Kan News called him the ultimate envoy of public broadcasting in Europe. His presidency of the Foreign Press Association in France and his work on FIPRESCI juries extended his influence into the international press and cinema-criticism communities.

In 1997 Kutz received a French state doctorate for his research on the Hebrew press in Europe, associated with President Jacques Chirac. Brit Ivrit Olamit awarded him the Ben Yehuda medal twice, in Paris in 2003 and in Poland in 2011, for promoting Hebrew culture in Europe. The French government granted him excellence research support annually from 2007 to 2011. He served five years as president of the Foreign Press Association in France and was later named honorary president. He was vice-president of the French Union of Cinema Journalists, founded and directed the Les Plumes d'Or cinema and critics awards, and sat on FIPRESCI juries at major festivals including Cannes. In 2016 he was elected to chair the history section of IAMCR; in 2017 he was a visiting professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

Beyond straight news, Kutz wrote satire for student papers, cabaret stages and television and radio comedy programmes, and authored the satirical book Sipurei Taamon (1977). Video archives preserve his field reports from Tunis, Cairo, Tehran and Damascus, including special Mabat pieces filed minutes after landing in Syria. He appeared regularly as a commentator on French and Israeli channels and contributed film criticism through FIPRESCI and festival juries. His academic lectures, including a Tel Aviv University discussion of fake news and Israeli media, circulated on university video platforms.

In October 2002, while covering a Francophonie summit in Beirut as part of French president Jacques Chirac's travelling press, Kutz filed reports for Israeli Channel 2 and was then isolated from other journalists and expelled from Lebanon. The episode was widely reported in the Israeli press as an example of the risks facing Israeli correspondents in hostile environments. A related academic speaking invitation at a Canadian university was briefly cancelled and then reinstated after debate over his coverage. No other sustained public controversy dominated his later career in the sources reviewed for this profile.