The Israeli statesman, diplomat, and scholar Abba Eban (born 1915) served as Israel's United Nations representative and ambassador to the United States until 1959. He was Israel's foreign minister between 1966 and 1974.

Abba Solomon Eban was born in 1915 in Capetown, South Africa. His parents moved to Great Britain during his childhood, where Eban studied classics and oriental languages at Cambridge University. He learned seven languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. At Cambridge he was active as a student Zionist leader, in the University Labor Society, and as president of the Student Union. During World War II he volunteered as a private in the British army, rising to the rank of major. One of his assignments between 1942 and 1944 was chief instructor at the British military's Middle East Arabic Center in Jerusalem. Because of his Zionist connections he also served as liaison officer for the British with the Jewish Agency, predecessor of the...