Uri Avnery was an Israeli peace activist, journalist, author, and politician. Born Helmut Ostermann into a Jewish family in Germany, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1933 following the Nazi rise to power. In his youth, he joined the Jewish paramilitary group Irgun and later served in an Israeli combat unit during the 1948 war, where he was wounded in action.
From 1950 to 1990, Avnery served as the editor-in-chief of HaOlam HaZeh, an anti-establishment newsweekly known for investigative journalism and critiques of state policy. He served two terms in the Knesset (1965–1973 and 1979–1981) and co-founded the peace organization Gush Shalom in 1993. His early writings on the 1948 war provided source material for what would later be developed by Israel’s “New Historians.”
Avnery was an early proponent of a “Two-State Solution.” During the 1982 Siege of Beirut, he crossed enemy lines to meet face-to-face with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat, marking the first public meeting between an Israeli figure and the Palestinian leadership. Throughout his career and until his death in 2018, Avnery argued that long-term security required the recognition of Palestinian national rights and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.