Mike Wallace’s Interview With Abba Eban

With 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace dying yesterday, now seems like an opportune time to bring out his 1958 interview with Abba Eban, Israel’s ambassador to the US at the time (hat tip: Eric).

What is particularly interesting about this interview – besides Eban’s unparalleled eloquence and the inline cigarette advertisements – are Wallace’s questions, which reveal the same kinds of arguments and claims against Israel, which we hear today (such as Israel’s deeds against the Arabs are like the crimes committed against us by the Nazis, US support for Israel antagonizes the Arab world, and Zionism imposes on Jews around the world dual loyalty). Also noteworthy is the claim of the President of the National Bank of Egypt that Israel was doomed to go bankrupt, due to its pitiful resources and limited industry(!)

8 thoughts on “Mike Wallace’s Interview With Abba Eban”

  1. Jim from Iowa

    Old Carnac the Magnificent (Johnny Carson) joke updated for IsraellyCool:

    The answer to the question contained in this sealed envelope I now hold in my hand is: Abba Eban.

    (Tears open envelope) And the question is: What is the sound made when Lauren Booth takes off her pantyhose?

  2. I played a rugby match against his old school, St Olaves, crap at rugby.

    The site itself has moved since his time, they now are in these tasteless things thrown up in the sixties but I have seen the buildings Eban would have been in in Southwark. Really impressive and impressive places should produce impressive people like him.

    Same school as John Harvard went to.

  3. Jawbone of an Ass

    What impressed me was Eban’s command of all relevant facts on any random subject Wallace wanted to throw at him.

    1. Go google around to see what a shill Wallace was for the PLO and Arabfat. Garbage in, garbage out.

      And not just about the Mideast. There’s plenty more.

      1. My beef with Mike Wallace was that he pioneered the celebrity journalist phenomena that we live with today. 60 Minutes did more to blur the lines between entertainment and journalism than any other program. How can you do a hard-hitting interview with Ronald and Nancy Reagan and remain their close personal friend? And Wallace himself admitted that the ambush technique he made famous, while good for television ratings, gained little useful information for the story.

  4. Any surprise that he won a triple first at Cambridge (Eban, not Wallace)? But how did he manage to be elected VP of the UN General Assembly?

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