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Abba Solomon Meir Eban" Abba Eban: Israeli statesman." Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 3 January 2016. (; ; 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."
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 master (he enjoyed translating newspaper articles into Ancient Greek). 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.
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.
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".Cowper-Coles, Sherard. Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office Mandarin. London: HarperPress, 2012. p. 19.
In 1947, he translated from the original Arabic Maze of Justice: Diary of a Country Prosecutor, a 1937 novel by Tawfiq al-Hakim.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.The translation was published in 1947 by Harvill Press, London; see: . 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).
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.
He was renowned for his oratorical skills. As Henry Kissinger stated:
His knowledge of history and fluency in ten languages enhanced his speech-making in the United Nations, even to skeptical or hostile audiences. 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. 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!"
From 1966 to 1974, Eban served as Israel's foreign minister. 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."Quoted in 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." 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.
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.
Eban's son, Eli Eban, is a clarinetist who teaches at Indiana University. Eli has two children, Yael and Omri Eban.
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