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Uri Avnery - Carrying my first dead body (34/315)

138 views · Published 8 August 2017 · 2:04 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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To listen to more of Uri Avnery’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFw4EQRLZvAoreWVLWLJDNaI

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:  We left. We went to Hulda. How did we get to Hulda? Bet-Dagan was in Arab hands so we went through Mikveh Israel, from Mikveh Israel to Rishon Lezion, from there to Ekron and from there to Hulda. And we set up camp in Hulda. In Na'an they let us off the buses and we started to walk. The entire company, 100 or so people, walked through that terribly dark night, I remember from Na'an to Hulda. By nature I push forward, so I was in the front row. We couldn't walk in procession –  it was all fields at the time – so we walked en masse. And there was someone walking next to me wearing a light shirt. I did not see his face. And suddenly, along the way, we came under fire, and the guy in the light shirt was killed.

The first dead person that I ever saw, or the first person I saw killed, and you know what it's like in the army. I was standing close to the victim so the commander said: 'You, you and you, return the body to Na'an'. We put him on a stretcher and the four of us took him back to Na'an. Quite a few kilometers through an open field. I had no idea that a dead person weighs so much; we went crazy with his weight. So we brought him to Na'an and we handed him over.

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