'Father' Eban remembered

Editorial

Peace and security, with their territorial, economic and demographic implications, can only be built by the free negotiation which is the true essence of sovereign responsibility. A call to the recent combatants to negotiate the conditions of their future co-existence is the only constructive course which this Assembly could take. ... The Middle East, tired of wars, is ripe for a new emergence of human vitality. Let the opportunity not fall again from our hands.

Israel's current ambassador could address these stirring words to the United Nations today. Abba Eban, a father of Israel's existence, uttered them on June 19, 1967, after the Six Day War. As the smoldering remains of Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian tanks, planes and transports cooled on the battlefield, Eban rose up at the U.N. to present a vision of peace.

But just as Israel's neighbors rejected Eban's outstretched hand in 1948 and 1956, they again rejected his vision for peace in 1973.

For a lifetime, Eban, who died Nov. 18 at age 87, pursued peace. Supremely cultured and eloquent, he presented impassioned arguments on a level with the greatest speeches of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Franklin Roosevelt.

The Cape Town, South Africa, native moved to England with his family when he was 7 months old. Young Aubrey Solomon Eban received a classic British education, side by side with Hebrew and Jewish teachings from his maternal grandfather, Eliahu Sacks.

As an adult, Eban melded Western culture and refinement with ancient Jewish teachings and the modern Zionist dream. And he devoted his life to making this dream a reality.

He arranged the pivotal meeting between Chaim Weizmann and President Harry S. Truman that led to Israel's independence. He helped secure the cease-fire in 1948 between Israel and her neighbors that allowed the fledgling Jewish state to regroup. He negotiated the U.S. arms airlift in 1973 that helped Israel turn the tide of the Yom Kippur War.

Unfortunately, his eloquence, intellect and utopian vision for peace distanced him from mainstream Israeli politicians who over the decades grew increasingly pragmatic and conservative.

Near the end of his life, Eban narrated a nine-part television series canvassing the history of the Jewish people. Israel had no better chronicler.

Abba Eban: ambassador, deputy prime minister, minister of foreign affairs. Abba Eban: "Father" Eban, father of the modern state of Israel, the bridge between what Israel was and what Israel will yet become.

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