Our intention to regard the closing of the Straits as a casus belli was communicated…to the foreign ministers of those states which had supported international navigation in the Straits in 1957 and thereafter.
ABBA EBANHis ignorance is encyclopedic.
More Abba Eban Quotes
-
-
Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don’t worship it. Feed it. [Addressing a group of prospective contributors to an Israeli scientific research program]
ABBA EBAN -
Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.
ABBA EBAN -
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.
ABBA EBAN -
A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
ABBA EBAN -
The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
ABBA EBAN -
Zionism is nothing more, but also nothing less, than the Jewish People’s sense of origin and destination in the Land linked eternally with its name.
ABBA EBAN -
Better to be disliked than pitied.
ABBA EBAN -
Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
ABBA EBAN -
Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.
ABBA EBAN -
Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
ABBA EBAN -
One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.
ABBA EBAN -
It [idolatry] nourishes mans ambition to domineer over his fellow man. Idolatry, therefore, is the source of all social and moral evil in the world.
ABBA EBAN -
It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
ABBA EBAN -
Salvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man’s initiative.
ABBA EBAN -
Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved.
ABBA EBAN