Uri Avnery

Of ROBERT FISH
www.independent.co.uk
It seemed somehow fitting that the first news of Uri Avnery's passing came to me from one of Israel's staunchest enemies, the leader of the Lebanese Druze Walid Jumblatt. A legend that brings sad news of another legend, a socialist preparing to mourn a fellow socialist, which expresses its condolences for the ninety-four-year-old Israeli political philosopher. The same philosopher who, a time, he had been a German Jewish schoolboy, Helmut Ostermann, who refused to give the Nazi salute to Hitler at school, but what it had become, according to the message I had received from Jumblatt, “a mind absolutely indispensable for the understanding of fascism, the greatest destructive factor of the 20th century.” Words by Jumblatt. “Avnery,” he then added [Jumblatt], “he also understood the meaning of Zionism, another ignoble theory based on apartheid, nothing more than an offshoot of fascism.”
Uri Avnery he had a very serious heart attack over the weekend and died on Monday morning. He considered himself a Zionist, or at least a believer in a left-wing Israel, courageous but humble “beacon of light among the nations,” a type of nation to which, in our hearts, I'd like to believe. He was among those Israelis who we, liberals with a tender heart, we hurried to visit as soon as we got in Israel, because they said what we wanted to hear. Read More

Of Uri Avnery
The march of madness
Source: Comedonchisciotte
You can look at the events in Gaza with your left eye or with your right eye. One can condemn them as inhumane, cruel and wrong, or you can justify them as necessary and indispensable. But there is one adjective that cannot be compromised on. They are stupid.
If the good soul Barbara Tuchman were still alive, might be tempted to add another chapter to her seminal text “The March of Madness”: a chapter titled “Blind in Gaza.”
The last episode of this epic began a few months ago, when independent activists from the Gaza Strip had organized, together with Hamas, a march on the border with Israel. It was called “The Great March of Return,” a purely symbolic gesture for the million-plus Arab residents [in the Strip]who had had to flee or had been driven from their homes, from that territory which later became the state of Israel.
The Israeli authorities pretended to take the matter seriously. The Israeli public had been presented with a horrifying picture of the situation: 1,8 millions of Arabs, men, women and children about to throw themselves against the border fences, break them down in many places and lay fire to the cities and villages of Israel. Terrifying. Read More