Uri Avnery - Definition and Overview

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. Earlier he was a member of the Revisionist Zionist militant group Etzel, better known as the 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 "In the fields of the Philistines" בשדות פלשת".

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 sleezy 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 (http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/uri2.html)
• Uri Avnery's News Pages (http://www.avnery-news.co.il/)
• Gush Shalom (http://www.gush-shalom.org)