Abba Solomon Meir Eban[1] (/ˈɑːbə ˈiːbən/ ⓘ; Hebrew: אבא שלמה אבן [ˈ(ʔ)aba ˈ(ʔ)even]; born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban; 2 February 1915 – 17 November 2002) was a South African-born Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages.

[7] He attended St Olave's Grammar School, then in Southwark, and read Classics and Oriental languages at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he achieved a very rare triple first, studying Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian; these were three of the ten languages he would reportedly master[8] (he enjoyed translating newspapers into Ancient Greek).

After the war he continued in his post, helping to establish and run the British Foreign Office's Middle East Centre for Arab Studies which was originally based in Jerusalem before relocating to Shemlan near Beirut.

[10][11] Eban moved back to London briefly to work in the Jewish Agency's Information Department, from which he was posted to New York, where the United Nations General Assembly was considering the "Palestine Question".

Sentences poured forth in mellifluous constructions complicated enough to test the listener’s intelligence and simultaneously leave him transfixed by the speaker's virtuosity.

[13] His knowledge of history and fluency in ten languages enhanced his speech-making in the United Nations, even to skeptical or hostile audiences.

A collection of Eban's speeches before the United Nations' Security Council and General Assembly both at universities and other venues between 1948 and 1968 was compiled in Voice of Israel,[15] recently reissued in eBook form by Plunkett Lake Press.

"[16] Eban left the United States in 1959 and returned to Israel, where he was elected to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) as a member of Mapai.

[12] He defended the country's reputation after the Six-Day War by asserting, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, that Israel acted in response to an imminent threat: "So on the fateful morning of 5 June, when Egyptian forces moved by air and land against Israel's western coast and southern territory, our country's choice was plain.

Five days after the USS Liberty incident took place, Harman cabled from Washington D.C. to Eban in Tel Aviv that one of their sources was reporting that the Americans had "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."

In 1977 and 1981, it was widely understood that Shimon Peres intended to name Eban Foreign Minister, had the Labor Party won those elections.

He was survived by his wife, Shoshana "Suzy" (née Ambache) (sister of Aura Herzog), who died in 2011, and their two children.