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Uri Avnery (1923-2018) was an Israeli writer, journalist and peace activist. He was editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine "HaOlam HaZeh" and founded the Gush Shalom peace movement. [Listener: Anat Saragusti; date recorded: 2017]
TRANSCRIPT: There was a discussion in the Knesset before I became a member of Parliament. During a break, I was sitting in the Knesset cafeteria and sitting at another table were the heads of the police force: Ezekiel Sahar, the Police Commissioner, Amos Ben-Gurion, the Deputy Commissioner, and several other officers. And I was quite friendly with Amos Ben-Gurion. So-so from afar, but friendly. So he came up to my table and said: 'Well, who's your next victim?' So I said: 'You. Three bombs. The police hint that they suspect us, but there is not even one suspect. Nothing'. And that's how it was. We began a campaign of disclosures about the police and at exactly that same time there was a body called Shurat Hamitnadvim.
These were good people who wanted to do good things, among which to teach new immigrants Hebrew. And Moshe Sharett, who lived in Jerusalem was the Foreign Minister, and as the Foreign Minister he received an official residence. What does a decent Zionist leader do? He sold his private apartment and distributed the money to several organisations that do good things, among others to Shurat Hamitnadvim. And Shurat Hamitnadvim somehow, it's not clear, got the idea to fight corruption in the country, and they learned about a case in which the police, Amos Ben-Gurion, his friend, Shaike Yarkoni, the husband of Yaffa Yarkoni, were engaged in some kind of importation which was illegal or corrupt, and just as we were beginning our series on police corruption – by some strange coincidence – Shurat Hamitnadvim started with their publications on exactly the same subject.
