Word: eban
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Abba Eban 's frank words "The question gnawed at the very I roots of Israel's conscience." The author of those words is Abba Eban, 68, Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1966 to 1974, and the question revolves around Israel's controversial role in last year's massacre of 700 to 800 Palestinian refugees in Beirut. Eban addresses that issue, among others, in a provocative new essay: his twelve-page introduction to an English-language version of the Israeli commission-of-inquiry report on the massacre, commercially reprinted in the U.S. this week...
Like the three members of the commission, Eban does not view criticism of an Israeli government as tantamount to support of the country's enemies. Indeed, the veteran diplomat describes the massacre, which was conducted by Lebanese Christians in an area under Israeli military control, as "a gruesome pogrom" administered with "Nazi-like sadism...
...Eban places the recent events within a broader historical context. He points out that his own Labor Party has never endorsed pacifism, which could, in the turbulent Middle East, amount to suicide. But, he maintains, his party has always believed that war should be "a last, reluctant resort," to be pursued only with limited aims and limited forces. By comparison, the "Zionist Revisionist movement," from which Prime Minister Menachem Begin's Likud government was born, has always given "war a larger place." With their "mystique of heroism . . . martial songs, uniforms, parades and unofficial armies," Eban writes, the Revisionists, even...
...solidarity among Jews, the Prime Minister has managed to guide Israel by his firm hand alone. At times, Begin's "the hell with everyone else" attitude was worthy of admiration. By bombing the Iraqui nuclear reactor, for example, Israel sacrificed popularity for safety. As former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban has said, "Better to be unpopular than dead...
...Lebanon. Israelis were also worried about the cost of the war in terms of their nation's prestige abroad. Night after night, throughout much of the world, television screens had shown Israeli forces using their sophisticated American-made weaponry to produce devastation in densely populated West Beirut. Abba Eban, a former Foreign Minister and a leading member of the opposition Labor Party in the Knesset, was undoubtedly correct when he concluded, "Israel's policies, image, character, values and aspirations are less understood and admired today than in any other period of her history...