11 Abba Eban Quotes on Politics

Abba Eban quotes on politics

2. The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

3. 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.

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

5. 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.

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

11. Israel is not an aviary.

12. Israel was and is breathing only with a single lung.

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

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

18. '.. 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...' (The United Nations, 3 July 1948)

21. This refugee problem has been artificially maintained for political motives. Recent years have seen great expansion of Middle East economies, but the Arab governments have so far stopped the refugees from sharing this. The vast Arab world could find home for a million refugees. Speaking to the UN in 1958