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 EBANHuman beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
More Abba Eban Quotes
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Israel is not an aviary.
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You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way. You can’t be detached and effective.
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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.
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A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
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A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
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Salvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man’s initiative.
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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.
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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.
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Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
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Better to be disliked than pitied.
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Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.
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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.
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If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.
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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
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