Abba Eban

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Abba Eban (1951)

Abba Eban (originally: Aubrey Solomon Eban ) ( Hebrew אבא אבן) ( February 2, 1915 in Cape Town , South Africa - November 17, 2002 in Petach Tikwa ) was an Israeli diplomat , minister, and member of the Knesset .

Life

Eban was born as Aubrey Solomon Eban in Cape Town, South Africa. After his father's death, his family moved to England , where his mother worked as a secretary for a Zionist organization and remarried in 1923. Eban attended St. Olave's Grammar School and studied Oriental and Classical Languages at Cambridge University . After graduating as a Fellow of Pembroke College from 1938 to 1940, he also taught Arabic here. He was active in the Federation of Zionist Youth and wrote for The Young Zionist magazine .

During World War II he served in the British Army, where he achieved the rank of major .

Eventually he became an Allied liaison officer to the yishuv in Palestine, where he stayed after the war. After he decided to stay in Israel, he changed his name to Abba. He was the first representative of Israel to the United Nations , where he successfully campaigned for the UN resolution to divide Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state ( Resolution 181 ). Eban was with the United Nations for about ten years and also served as his country's ambassador to the United States . Eban was known for his rhetorical skills, in the words of Henry Kissinger :

“I have never met anyone who could have rivaled him in command of the English language. Sentences poured out of him in honey-sweet word additions, complicated enough to test the intelligence of the listener and at the same time to petrify him of the virtuosity of the rhetorician. "

But Eban was also able to speak nine other languages ​​fluently. These skills allowed him to put Israel in a far better position at the United Nations. In 1952 Eban was even appointed Vice President of the General Assembly.

Eban left the United States in 1959, returned to Israel and was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Mapai . In 1960 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Under Ben Gurion he was minister of education and culture from 1960 to 1963, and under Levi Eschkol he was deputy prime minister until 1966 . From 1959 to 1966 he was also President of the Weizmann Institute in Rechowot .

Eban was Israel's Foreign Minister from 1966 to 1974 and publicly defended the occupation of the West Bank , Gaza , the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem . But he advocated the return of the areas in exchange for peace. In 1970 Eban was the first Israeli foreign minister to visit the Federal Republic of Germany. In return, Walter Scheel traveled to Israel in the same year . Eban has been criticized on several occasions for failing to make his views more heard in the internal Israeli debate. He played an important role in the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967 (and Resolution 338 in 1973). After the Yom Kippur War , Eban was involved in the negotiations for a troop unbundling agreement between Egypt and Israel.

In 1988, after three decades of membership in the Knesset, he lost his seat due to internal divisions in the Labor Party . He devoted the rest of his life to writing and teaching, including as a visiting professor at Princeton University and Columbia University . He has also been involved in television documentaries ( Heritage: Civilization and the Jews ( PBS - 1984), Israel, A Nation Is Born (1992), and On the Brink of Peace (PBS - 1997)).

1989 awarded him the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , the honorary doctorate . In 2001 Eban received the Israel Prize , the highest honor in his country. Abba Eban, known for his brilliant rhetoric , statesmanship at the United Nations and his knowledge of numerous languages, is buried in Kfar Shmaryahu, north of Tel Aviv.

Works

• These are my people. Fackelverlag, 1970, 447 pp. (Original: 1968 My People, The Story Of The Jews. )
• My country. Modern Israel. 1972.
• The Heritage. The history of Judaism. 1984.

literature

• Wolfgang Kraushaar : “When will the fight against the holy cow Israel finally begin?” Munich 1970: on the anti-Semitic roots of German terrorism. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-498-03411-5 , short biography p. 776 f.

Web links

Commons : Abba Eban  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Abba Eban in the catalog of the German National Library
• Abba Eban in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Abba Eban, the voice of Israel, dies at 87. In: Haaretz.com. Retrieved August 7, 2016 . 
2. ^ Abba Eban, 1915-2002: Father of Israeli diplomacy. In: www.israelnetz.com. Retrieved August 7, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Abba Eban - WHO'S WHO biography. In: www.whoswho.de. Retrieved August 7, 2016 .