Abba S. Eban, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, declared today that it was “tragic” that the Middle East, “the region which first gave the world its understanding of unity in nature and unity in man,” should now “be the most ravaged and disunited of regions.” Mr. Eban, who also is president of the Weizmann Institute of Science, spoke at a reception in his honor given by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences here.
Asserting that small nations, such as Israel, “need not stand paralyzed before the vastness of the atomic powers, “Mr. Eban noted that “ancient Israel was but a small pastoral people, maintaining its national existence at a time when history was dominated by the empires of the Euphrates and the Nile.” Yet the achievements “of this small people were to shed a unique radiance over the life of all ensuing generations,” he pointed out.
The empires surrounding Israel, “Mr. Eban said, “exceeded her in power and wealth, in the refinements of their material lives, and in the varied sophistication of their arts. But all these crumbled into dust, while this small people–and no other–became the first to grasp the full vision of a united creation; to be elevated by a sense of invisible forces at work upon the human scene; and to discern an idea order lurking behind the manifold appearance of things.”
Asserting that the Middle East had “a better destiny” than its present disunity, Mr. Eban said that the mission of the region was “peace, not war. Its vocation is progress, not conflict. There is not a single state in its midst which cannot well afford to live in peace with every other state in the region.”
He predicted that history would “summon the peoples of our region to a realization of their underlying kinship. The Arab world will awaken to the sheer compulsion of a future to be shared with us in peace.”
“The Great Powers can do much to hasten this day, by strengthening security under the rule of law, ” he added. “They can do this by positive action–by protecting the territorial structure against forcible change; by helping Middle Eastern states to develop their new political freedom into broader visions of economic and social progress; by avoiding any dislocation of the intra-regional balance; and by sheltering our fragile security from the stormy gusts of great power rivalry.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
