1923 -
Israeli Journalist, writer, politician, and peace activist.
Born Helmut Ostermann in Beckum, Germany, Avnery immigrated to Palestine at the age of ten. As a youth he was close to the Canaanite movement, which advocated the creation of a new "Hebrew nation" by severing ties with the Jewish diaspora. Avnery also joined the Revisionist Irgun Zvaʾi Leʾumi in 1938, but left the dissident organization several years later because of its anti-Arab ideology.
Avnery recognized, early on, the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and advocated a "Semetic alliance" of both nations: Jews and Arabs. In the Arab-Israel War of 1948 he fought and was wounded as a combat soldier; he later published his critical views of the war in two best-selling books. During the 1950s and 1960s Avnery owned and edited the controversial but successful weekly magazine ha-Olam ha-Zeh, which combined radically critical political editorials with socialite gossip and mild pornography. In 1965, cashing in on the popularity of his magazine, he established a party named after his journal and won two seats in the Knesset in which he served, with a one-term intermission, for ten years.
Ever since the Arab - Israel War of June 1967, Avnery has become one of the most outspoken radical leaders of Israel's peace movement, leading various groups and advocating both the recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. He was one of the first Israelis to establish contacts with PLO representatives, first with Saʿid Hamami in London and then with Issam Sartawi in Paris. Avnery was also one of the first Israelis to meet personally with Chairman Yasir Arafat, initially during the siege of Beirut and then at his headquarters in Tunis, in open defiance of Israel's ban on such meetings. After the Oslo Accords of 1993, Avnery founded a group called Gush Shalom (the Bloc for Peace) which advocated a total withdrawal of Israel from all occupied territories, total dismantling of all Jewish settlements in these territories, and the solution of the conflict by the creation of "two states for two nations" in historic Palestine. This message has been vigorously disseminated by vigils, demonstrations, clashes with the police, and paid advertisements, as well as through Avnery's regular newspaper columns and his personal web site "Avnery News."
Bibliography
Avnery, Uri. Israel without Zionism: A Plea for Peace in the MiddleEast. London: Macmillan, 1968.
Avnery, Uri. My Friend the Enemy. London: Zed Books, 1986.
"Avnery News." Available from http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/.
Bar-On, Mordechai. In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the IsraeliPeace Movement. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1996.
— MARTIN MALIN UPDATED BY MORDECHAI BAR-ON
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
