Abba Eban

From Vero - Wikipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox officeholder

Abba Solomon Meir Eban<ref>"Abba Eban: Israeli statesman." Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 3 January 2016.</ref> (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx Template:IPA; born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban; 2 February 1915 – 17 November 2002) was a South African-born Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages.

During his career, he served as Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel. He was the second ambassador to the United States and the first Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations. He was also vice president of the United Nations General Assembly and president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Eban famously remarked of the Palestinians, "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."<ref name=":1" />

Early life, family and education

Eban was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 2 February 1915 to Lithuanian Jewish<ref name="NYT">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> parents. His father, Avram Solomon, died in London to which the family had come seeking treatment for his undiagnosed illness less than a week before Eban's first birthday.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He recalled being sent to his grandfather's house as a child to study the Hebrew language, Talmud, and Biblical literature.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He lived for a period of time in Belfast, Northern Ireland.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

He attended St Olave's Grammar School, then in Southwark, and read Classics and Oriental languages at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he achieved a very rare triple first, studying Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian; these were three of the ten languages he would reportedly masterTemplate:Efn (he enjoyed translating newspaper articles into Ancient Greek).<ref name= ":0">Template:Cite news</ref> At the age of 23, he became a Fellow of Pembroke College, a role he held from 1938 to 1939, and was marked for a distinguished academic career.<ref name=":0" />

During his time at university and afterwards, Eban was highly involved in the Federation of Zionist Youth and was editor of its journal, The Young Zionist. At the outbreak of World War II, he worked for Chaim Weizmann at the Zionist Organization in London from December 1939.

Career

Early career

Eban served in the British Army in Egypt and Mandate Palestine, becoming an intelligence officer in Jerusalem, where he coordinated and trained volunteers for resistance in the event of a German invasion, serving as a liaison officer for the Allies to the Jewish Yishuv.

After the war he continued in his post, helping to establish and run the British Foreign Office's Middle East Centre for Arab Studies which was originally based in Jerusalem before relocating to Shemlan near Beirut. He was at that time known as "Aubrey Evans".<ref>Cowper-Coles, Sherard. Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office Mandarin. London: HarperPress, 2012. p. 19.</ref>

In 1947, he translated from the original Arabic Maze of Justice: Diary of a Country Prosecutor, a 1937 novel by Tawfiq al-Hakim.<ref>Johnson-Davies, Denys (2008). "Introduction". In: Johnson-Davies (ed.). The Essential Tawfiq Al-Hakim: Plays, Fiction, Autobiography (pp. 1–4). Cairo; New York: The American University in Cairo Press. p. 4. This edited volume contains an excerpt from the novel, in Eban's translation, pp. 201–210.</ref><ref>The translation was published in 1947 by Harvill Press, London; see: Template:OCLC. It was reissued in 1989 under the title Maze of Justice: Diary of a country prosecutor: an Egyptian novel (London: Saqi Books; Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press).</ref>

Diplomacy

File:Israel UN delegation 1950.jpg
Israeli UN delegation: (L–R) consul general A. Lourie; counsellor J. Robinson; Eban; Avraham Katznelson; Gideon Rafael (1950)
File:Truman-bengurion.jpg
(L–R) U.S. President Truman, Eban, and Israeli PM Ben-Gurion (1951)

Eban moved back to London briefly to work in the Jewish Agency's Information Department, from which he was posted to New York, where the United Nations General Assembly 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 recommendation of partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab segments—Resolution 181. At this stage, he changed his name to the Hebrew word Abba, meaning "Father".<ref name= NYT/>

Eban continued at the United Nations over the next decade. From 1950 to 1959 he also served as his country's ambassador to the United States.<ref name="EncycJudaica">Template:Cite EJ</ref>

He was renowned for his oratorical skills. As Henry Kissinger stated: Template:Blockquote His knowledge of history and fluency in ten languages enhanced his speech-making in the United Nations, even to skeptical or hostile audiences.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1952, Eban was elected vice president of the UN General Assembly. A collection of Eban's speeches before the United Nations' Security Council and General Assembly as well as at universities and other venues between 1948 and 1968 was compiled in Voice of Israel.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was also known for his witty remarks. For example, when he was complimented on his perfect Oxford English, he corrected that actually attended Cambridge, "but in public life you must expect to be smeared!"<ref name= SiniverII>Template:Cite book</ref>

Politics

File:Aankomst Israelische minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Abba Eban op Schiphol, rech, Bestanddeelnr 921-1960.jpg
Abba Eban at a press conference (1968)

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 Mapai.<ref name="EncycJudaica"/> 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.<ref name="EncycJudaica"/><ref name= Guardian-obit>Template:Cite news</ref> Through this period (1959–66), he also served as president of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.<ref name="EncycJudaica"/>

From 1966 to 1974, Eban served as Israel's foreign minister.<ref name="EncycJudaica"/> He defended the country's reputation after the Six-Day War by asserting, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, that Israel acted in response to an imminent threat: "So on the fateful morning of 5 June, when Egyptian forces moved by air and land against Israel's western coast and southern territory, our country's choice was plain."<ref>Quoted in Template:Cite book</ref> Nonetheless, he was a strong supporter of trading parts of the territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace. While serving as foreign minister, he remained in contact with Israel's Ambassador to the US Avraham Harman during the war. Five days after the USS Liberty incident took place, Harman cabled from Washington D.C. to Eban in Tel Aviv that one of their sources was reporting that the Americans had "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway." Three days later, Harman repeated the warning to Eban that the White House was "very angry" and "the reason for this is that the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Eban also played an important part in the shaping of UN Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967, as well as Resolution 338 in 1973. Among his other high level contacts, he was received by Pope Paul VI in 1969.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Eban was at times criticized for not voicing his opinions in Israel's internal debate. However, he was generally known to be on the "dovish" side of Israeli politics and was increasingly outspoken after leaving the cabinet. In 1977 and 1981, it was widely understood that Shimon Peres intended to name him Foreign Minister, had the Labor Party won those elections. Eban was offered the chance to serve as minister without portfolio in the 1984 national unity government, but instead he chose to serve as chair of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from 1984 to 1988.

His comment that Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" (meaning, for peace), made after the Geneva peace talks in December 1973, is often quoted.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref>

Later career

File:King of Nepal 1958.jpg
Abba Eban (left) escorting the King of Nepal in a 1958 visit to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. Shortly after the visit, Eban became President of the Institute.

In 1988, after three decades in the Knesset, Eban lost his seat over internal splits in the Labour Party. He devoted the rest of his life to writing and teaching, including serving as a visiting academic at Princeton University, Columbia University and George Washington 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 his book Diplomacy for the Next Century (p. 161) he said of Benjamin Netanyahu "Only Binyamin Netanyahu, the newly elected Israeli leader, failed to comprehend the centrality of the Palestine issue in the Middle East".

Awards

In 2001, Eban was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society and the State.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life and death

Eban was married to Shoshana "Suzy" (née Ambache) (sister of Aura Herzog), and they had two children.<ref name= widow>Template:Cite web</ref> Eban died in 2002 and was buried in Kfar Shmaryahu, north of Tel Aviv. Suzy died in 2011.<ref name= widow />

Eban's son, Eli Eban, is a clarinetist who teaches at Indiana University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Eli has two children, Yael and Omri Eban.

Published works

Notes

Template:Notelist

Citations

Template:Reflist

General sources and further reading

Template:Wikiquote Template:Commons category

Template:Permanent Representatives of Israel to the United Nations Template:IsraelEduMin Template:IsraelForeignMin Template:Chairmen of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Template:Presidents of Weizmann Institute of Science Template:Israeli ambassadors to the United States Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Abba_Eban&oldid=108944"