Abba Eban 's frank words "The question gnawed at the very I roots of Israel's conscience." The author of those words is Abba Eban, 68, Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1966 to 1974, and the question revolves around Israel's controversial role in last year's massacre of 700 to 800 Palestinian refugees in Beirut. Eban addresses that issue, among others, in a provocative new essay: his twelve-page introduction to an English-language version of the Israeli commission-of-inquiry report on the massacre, commercially reprinted in the U.S. this week (Karz-Cohl; $14.95).
Like the three members...