EBAN
(EE-buhn)
Israeli
diplomat and politician Common
clues: Abba
of Israel; Israeli diplomat Abba; "Voice of Israel"
author; Statesman Abba; “My People” author; “My
Country” author Crossword
puzzle frequency:
4 times a year News: The
war nobody wanted Video: Egypt
Accepts United Nations Cease-Fire (1967)
Men
and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other
alternatives.
– Abba Eban
Abba
Eban (born February 2, 1915, died November 17, 2002) was an
Israeli diplomat and politician.
Born
with the name Aubrey Solomon Meir in Cape Town, South Africa,
Eban moved to England at an early age. He was educated at St
Olave's Grammar School before studying Classics and Oriental
languages at Queens' College, Cambridge. After graduating with a
"Triple-Starred First", he researched Arabic and Hebrew
as a Fellow of Pembroke College from 1938–1939. At the
outbreak of World War II, Eban went to work for Chaim Weizmann at
the World Zionist Organization in London from December 1939. A
few months later he joined the British Army as an intelligence
officer, where he rose to the rank of major. He served as a
liaison officer for the Allies to the Jewish Yishuv of Palestine.
Drawing on his linguistic skills, In 1947 he translated from
Arabic a 1937 novel by Tawfiq Al Hakim(1898-1987): Maze of
Justice: Diary of a Country Prosecutor.
Eban
moved back to London briefly to work in the Jewish Agency's
Information Department, from where he was posted to New York,
where the General Assembly of the United Nations was considering
the "Palestine Question". In 1947, he was appointed as
a liaison officer to the United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine, where he was successful in attaining approval for the
partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab segments—Resolution
181. At this stage, he changed his name to the Hebrew word Abba
(however it was seldom used informally), meaning "Father",
as he could foresee himself as the father of the nation of
Israel. Eban spent a decade at the United Nations, and also
served as his country's ambassador to the United States at the
same time. He was renowned for his oratorical skills. In the
words of Henry Kissinger:
"I
have never encountered anyone who matched his command of the
English language. Sentences poured forth in mellifluous
constructions complicated enough to test the listener’s
intelligence and simultaneously leave him transfixed by the
speaker’s virtuosity."
His
polished presentation, grasp of history, and powerful speeches
gave him authority in a United Nations that was generally
skeptical of Israel or even hostile to it. He was fluent in ten
languages. In 1952, Eban was elected Vice President of the UN
General Assembly.
Eban
left the United States in 1959 and returned to Israel, where he
was elected to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) as a member
of the Mapai party. He served under David Ben-Gurion as Minister
of Education and Culture from 1960 to 1963, then as deputy to
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol until 1966. Through this entire period
(1959–1966), he also served as president of the Weizmann
Institute at Rehovot.
From
1966 to 1974, Eban served as Israel's foreign minister, defending
the country in the Six-Day War. Nonetheless, he was a strong
supporter of giving away the territories occupied in the war in
exchange for peace. He played an important part in the shaping of
UN Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967 (as well as UN
Security Council Resolution 338 in 1973). Eban was at times
criticized for not voicing his opinions in Israel's internal
debate.
His
comment that "Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an
opportunity [for peace]," made after the Geneva peace talks
in December 1973, is often quoted.
In
1988, after three decades in the Knesset, he lost his seat over
internal splits in the Israeli Labour Party. He devoted the rest
of his life to writing and teaching, including serving as a
visiting academic at Princeton University and Columbia
University. He also narrated television documentaries including
Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (PBS, 1984), for which he was
host, Israel, A Nation Is Born (1992), and On the Brink of Peace
(PBS, 1997).
In
2001, Eban received the Israel Prize, his country's highest
honor. He died in 2002 and was buried in Kfar Shmaryahu, north of
Tel Aviv.
Abba
Eban's brother-in-law is the late Chaim Herzog, the 6th president
of Israel. Herzog's son Isaac Herzog is a minister in Israel's
Knesset. Eban's cousin, Oliver Sacks, is a neurologist and author
and his son, Eli Eban, is a renowned clarinetist who teaches at
Indiana University. Eli has two children, Yael and Omri Eban. His
nephew, Jonathan Lynn is a film-maker and script-writer known for
satirical BBC shows Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. Lynn
recounts that the plot of an episode of Yes, Prime Minister,
which involved the British Prime Minister bypassing his own
Arab-centric bureaucracy by taking the Israeli ambassador's
advice, was based on an actual incident narrated to him by Eban.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Abba
Eban".
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