Friday, March 09, 2007

Abba Eban

Recently we saw part I of the series "Israel, A Nation Is Born" (1992), narrated by Abba Eban, the famous Israeli politician and writer. Although this was a well-told story seen through his eyes, it contained no surprises.
Born as Aubrey Solomon Meir in Cape Town, South Africa, Eban moved to England at an early age. He studied Classics and Oriental languages at Cambridge University. After graduating with a "Triple-Starred First", he researched Arabic and Hebrew from 1938–1939. At the outbreak of WWII, Eban went to work for Chaim Weizmann at the World Zionist Organization in London. 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.
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 meaning "Father". 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. 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. 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, where I met him a few times.
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 returning 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). Although he was undoubtedly gifted he failed to gain resonance with the Israeli electorate.
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. 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.

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