June 6, 1967
After leaving Jerusalem at the start of the Six-Day War the previous day, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban speaks to the U.N. Security Council to explain the pre-emptive Israel Defense Forces attacks of June 5.
“Israel, by its independent effort and sacrifice, has passed from serious danger to successful resistance,” Eban says.
His address explains that Egypt had created a state of war through its closure of the Strait of Tiran, removal of U.N. peacekeepers, concentration of military forces in the Sinai, and calls by President Gamal Abdel Nasser and others to destroy Israel.
Eban also raises the question of the purpose of the United Nations if it is unable to prevent such conflicts: “People in our country and in many countries ask: What is the use of a United Nations presence if it is in effect an umbrella which is taken away as soon as it begins to rain? Surely, then, future arrangements for peacekeeping must depend more on the agreement and the implementation of the parties themselves than on machinery which is totally at the mercy of the host country, so totally at its mercy as to be the instrument of its policies, whatever those policies may be.”
