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Um-Shmum (Hebrew: או"ם שמום, where um is the Hebrew acronymic pronunciation for "U.N.", and the "shm"-prefix signifies contempt) is a phrase coined by David Ben-Gurion, on 29 March 1955, during a debate within his cabinet, as a scorning utterance towards the United Nations, and an expression that reflects, even as to date, the way many Israelis feel about this institution-body. In that very same debate, he also famously said: "What matters is not what the Gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do",.
The original expression was uttered after Moshe Sharett responded to Ben-Gurion saying that there is a need to drive away the Egyptians out of Gaza due to the fedayeen's attacks from there. Moshe Sharett claimed that "The U.N should be treated with respect, since without it, the state of Israel would not have been established", and so Ben-Gurion replyed: "Only the daring of the Jews founded this country, not the resolutions of the U.N".
In 1988, Kofi Annan quoted this phrase, when he was visiting the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and made a rebutting pun himself by saying that in the world that we live in today, "without the UM we will all have klum " ("klum" is part of expressions which mean "nothing" in Hebrew).
See also
References
- Israel savages UN, Dispatch Online website