Abba Eban (1915 - 2002)

Israel's Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the UN

• Six Day War
• On Yom Kippur War

Famous Quotes

"Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

It would seem to me that after 3,000 years the time has arrived to accept Israel's nationhood as a fact, for here is the only State in the international community which has the same territory, speaks the same language and upholds the same faith as it did 3,000 years ago.

How grotesque would be an international community which found room for 122 sovereign units and which did not acknowledge the sovereignty of that people which had given nationhood its deepest significance and its most enduring grace.

Let us discern across the darkness the vision of a better and a brighter dawn.

His ignorance is encyclopedic

People in our country and in many countries ask: what is the use of a United Nations presence if it is in effect an umbrella which is taken away as soon as it begins to rain?

When the Council discusses what is to happen after the cease-fire, we hear many formulas: back to 1956, back to 1948--I understand our neighbors would wish to turn the clock back to 1947. The fact is, however, that most clocks move forward and not backward, and this, I think, should be the case with the clock of Middle Eastern peace--not backward to belligerency, but forward to peace.

I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.

They use the U.N. not as an instrument for solving conflicts, but an arena for waging them.

Israel is not an aviary.

Israel was and is breathing only with a single lung.

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.

Time and again these governments have rejected proposals today-and longed for them tomorrow.

When I was first here, we had the advantages of the underdog. Now we have the disadvantages of the overdog.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

 ".. Israel is the product of the most sustained historic tenacity which the ages recall. The state of Israel is on immutable part of the international landscape. To plan the future, without it is to build delusions on sand..."

When all else fails, men turn to reason.

It's not that Governments are constitutionally incapable of making the right decision, it's that they only do so as a matter of last resort.

When the Council discusses what is to happen after the cease-fire, we hear many formulas: back to 1956, back to 1948--I understand our neighbors would wish to turn the clock back to 1947. The fact is, however, that most clocks move forward and not backward, and this, I think, should be the case with the clock of Middle Eastern peace--not backward to belligerency, but forward to peace.

I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.

A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

When all else fails, men turn to reason.

".. Israel is the product of the most sustained historic tenacity which the ages recall. The state of Israel is on immutable part of the international landscape. To plan the future, without it is to build delusions on sand..."