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Um-Shmum

derogatory Hebrew/Israeli term for United Nations

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ7880969 ↗
Source-derived summary

Um-Shmum (Hebrew: או"ם שמום Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈ(ʔ)um ˈʃmum], where um is the Hebrew acronymic pronunciation for "U.N.", and the "shm"-prefix signifies dismissal, contempt or irony) is a phrase coined by the Israeli Minister of Defense (and former Prime Minister) David Ben-Gurion on March 29, 1955, during a cabinet debate regarding his plan to take the Gaza Strip from Egypt in response to the increasing fedayeen terror attacks on Israel.

History

The original expression was uttered as a response to Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who had stated in the previous cabinet session that if it hadn't been for the UN resolution of 1947, the State of Israel would not have been founded. According to Sharett's account in his diary, Ben-Gurion shouted: "Not at all! Only the daring of the Jews founded this country, and not some Um-Shmum resolution."

The term expresses contempt for the institutional-political importance of the United Nations, and denotes a feeling among many members of the Israeli public that the UN's policies towards Israel are biased and unfair.

In 1998, Kofi Annan quoted this phrase while visiting the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) 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 that mean "nothing" in Hebrew).

See also

Israel and the United Nations

Joe Shmoe

Culture of Israel

References

External links

Marcus, Yoel. Comments on the Situation, Haaretz, 22 September 2003. Archived at the Wayback Machine

"Um-Shmum: Seven Hours to Death", 2011 documentary, Gideon Gitai

Zakheim, Miryam. What Is the Meaning of “Um-Shmum”? David Ben-Gurion vs.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Um-Shmum” as derogatory Hebrew/Israeli term for United Nations. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Um-Shmum, derogatory and Hebrew.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 1947, 1998, 2003—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Um-Shmum, derogatory and Hebrew providing the first useful test.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7880969. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1947, 1998 and 2003.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Um-Shmum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.