Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery (Hebrew: אורי אבנרי), born September 10, 1923 in Beckum (Germany) as Helmut Ostermann, is an Israeli journalist and controversial peace activist. He was a member of the Knesset from 1965 to 1973 and again from 1979 to 1981. As a youth, he was a member of the Revisionist Zionist paramilitary group, Irgun. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War he was a fighter in the Samson Foxes jeep unit (and also wrote its anthem). After the war he wrote a book about the war, called Beesdot Pleshet 1948 ("In the fields of the Philistines") בשדות פלשת 1948.

During the 1950's and the 1960's he was the publisher and chief-editor of Haolam Hazeh weekly magazine – an anti-establishment tabloid known for many sensational scoops, as well as its sleazy style and backpage porn.

He later turned to left wing activism and founded the Gush Shalom (Hebrew: גוש שלום, "the Peace Bloc") movement, which he leads up to this day.

External links

• Uri Avnery Biography
• Uri Avnery's News Pages
• Gush Shalom