Moshe Dayan

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Moshe Dayan
משה דיין
Moshe Dayan, Chief of General Staff.jpg
Dayan as Chief of the General Staff
Ministerial career

In 1959, a year after he retired from the IDF, Dayan joined Mapai, the Israeli centre-left party, then led by David Ben-Gurion. Until 1964, he was the Minister of Agriculture. In 1965, Dayan joined with the group of Ben-Gurion loyalists who defected from Mapai to form Rafi. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol disliked Dayan. When tensions began to rise in early 1967, however, Eshkol appointed the charismatic and popular Dayan defence minister to raise public morale and bring Rafi into a unity government.

Despite his military background, Dayan advocated for the integration of the Palestinian Arabs in an eventual One-state solution. [70] [ failed verification ]

1967 Six-Day War

Moshe Dayan in South Vietnam, 1967 Dan Hadani collection (990044326670205171).jpg
Moshe Dayan in South Vietnam, 1967

Moshe Dayan was covering the Vietnam War to observe modern warfare up close after he left political life. Moreover, he was on patrol as an observer with members of the US Marine Corps. Although Dayan did not take part in most of the planning before the Six-Day War of June 1967, he personally oversaw the capture of East Jerusalem during the 5–7 June fighting. [71] During the years following the war, Dayan enjoyed enormous popularity in Israel and was widely viewed as a potential Prime Minister. At this time, Dayan was the leader of the hawkish camp within the Labor government, opposing a return to anything like Israel's pre-1967 borders. He once said that he preferred Sharm-al-Sheikh (an Egyptian town on the southern edge of the Sinai Peninsula overlooking Israel's shipping lane to the Red Sea via the Gulf of Aqaba) without peace, to peace without Sharm-al-Sheikh. He modified these views later in his career and played an important role in the eventual peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

Dayan's contention was denied by Muky Tsur, a longtime leader of the United Kibbutz Movement who said "For sure there were discussions about going up the Golan Heights or not going up the Golan Heights, but the discussions were about security for the kibbutzim in Galilee," he said. "I think that Dayan himself didn't want to go to the Golan Heights. This is something we've known for many years. But no kibbutz got any land from conquering the Golan Heights. People who went there went on their own. It's cynicism to say the kibbutzim wanted land." [72]

About Dayan's comments, Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has said [73]

There is an element of truth to Dayan's claim, but it is important to note that Israel regarded the de-militarized zones in the north as part of their sovereign territory and reserved the right to cultivate them—a right that the Syrians consistently resisted with force. Syria also worked to benefit from the Jordan river before it flowed into Israel, aiming to get use of it as a water source; Syria also actively supported Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel. Israel occasionally exploited incidents in the de-militarized zones to strike at the Syrian water diversion project and to punish the Syrians for their support of terror. Dayan's remarks must also be taken in context of the fact that he was a member of the opposition at the time. His attitude toward the Syrians changed dramatically once he became defense minister. Indeed, on June 8, 1967, Dayan bypassed both the Prime Minister and the Chief of the General Staff in ordering the Israeli army to attack and capture the Golan.

USS Liberty incident

During the Six-Day War, Israeli aerial and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty spy ship as she was on patrol in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. [74] 34 Americans were killed and 174 were wounded in the attack. Israel's official explanation was that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity,” but this remains disputed.

Many Liberty survivors and their supporters maintain that Dayan personally ordered the attack, and this is supported by a CIA report on the attack. [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81]

One of the prevailing theories for the motivation for the attack is that the Israelis wished to keep secret their pending invasion of the Golan Heights, and they feared that the signals intelligence collection ship might have collected intelligence about the pending invasion. [82] [83] [84] [85]

1973 Yom Kippur War

Moshe Dayan with President Richard Nixon (1970) President Nixon with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan - NARA - 194702.tif
Moshe Dayan with President Richard Nixon (1970)

After Golda Meir became prime minister in 1969 following the death of Levi Eshkol, Dayan remained defense minister.

He was still in that post when the Yom Kippur War began catastrophically for Israel on 6 October 1973. As the highest-ranking official responsible for military planning, Dayan may bear part of the responsibility for the Israeli leadership having missed the signs for the upcoming war. [86] In the hours preceding the war, Dayan chose not to order a full mobilization or a preemptive strike against the Egyptians and Syrians. [86] He assumed that Israel would be able to win easily even if the Arabs attacked and, more importantly, did not want Israel to appear as the aggressor, as it would have undoubtedly cost it the invaluable support of the United States (who would later mount a massive airlift to rearm Israel).

Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland (1978) Menachem Begin and Moshe Dayan exits from an aircraft.JPEG
Moshe Dayan and Menachem Begin, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland (1978)

Following the heavy defeats of the first two days, Dayan's views changed radically; he was close to announcing 'the downfall of the "Third Temple"' at a news conference, but was forbidden to speak by Meir.

Dayan suggested options at the beginning of the war, including a plan to withdraw to the Mitleh Mountains in Sinai and a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights to carry the battle over the Jordan, abandoning the core strategic principles of Israeli war doctrine, which says that war must be taken into enemy territory as soon as possible. Chief of the General Staff David Elazar objected to these plans and was proved correct. Israel broke through the Egyptian lines on the Sinai front, crossed the Suez canal, and encircled the 3rd Egyptian Army. Israel also counterattacked on the Syrian front, repelling the Jordanian and Iraqi expeditionary forces and shelling the outskirts of Damascus. Although the war ended with an Israeli victory, the Arab attack destroyed Israel's image of invincibility and eventually led to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the subsequent withdrawal of Israeli forces from all Egyptian territory.

Foreign minister

Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Moshe Dayan at Council of Europe in Strasbourg, October 1979. Boutros Boutros-Ghali et Moshe Dayan Strasbourg 10 octobre 1979.jpg
Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Moshe Dayan at Council of Europe in Strasbourg, October 1979.

According to those who knew him, the war deeply depressed Dayan. He went into political eclipse for a time. In 1977, despite having been re-elected to the Knesset for the Alignment, he accepted the offer to become Foreign Minister in the new Likud government led by Menachem Begin. He was expelled from the Alignment, and as a result, sat as an independent MK. As foreign minister in Begin's government, he was instrumental in drawing up the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement with Egypt. Dayan resigned his post in October 1979, because of a disagreement with Begin over whether the Palestinian territories were an internal Israeli matter (the Camp David treaty included provisions for future negotiations with the Palestinians; Begin, who did not like the idea, did not put Dayan in charge of the negotiating team). In 1981, he founded a new party, Telem.

Family

Ruth and Moshe Dayan with a Habima actor, 1953 Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - MOSHE DAYAN AND HIS WIFE RUTH WITH ONE OF THE HABIMA ACTORS.jpg
Ruth and Moshe Dayan with a Habima actor, 1953

Ruth Dayan, his first wife, divorced Moshe in 1971 after 36 years of marriage due to his numerous extramarital affairs. In the Israeli best-selling book that followed the divorce, Or Did I Dream the Dream?, Ruth Dayan wrote a chapter about "Moshe's bad taste in women". [87] In 1973, two years after the divorce, Dayan married Rachel Korem in a simple ceremony performed by Rabbi Mordechai Piron, IDF chief chaplain, at the Pirons' home. The wedding was not announced in advance and Piron had to recruit neighbors to complete a minyan (the 10-man quorum required for a religious ceremony). Dayan humorously told well-wishers that he had no trouble getting a marriage license. "She is divorced and I am divorced. I am no Cohen (priest) and no mamzer (bastard) so there was no trouble." Neither Dayan's daughter and two sons nor Korem's two daughters attended. [88] When he died, Dayan left almost his entire estate to his second wife, Rachel. [ citation needed ]

Moshe's and Ruth's daughter, Yael Dayan, a novelist, is best known in Israel for her book, My Father, His Daughter, about her relationship with her father. [89] She followed him into politics and has been a member of several Israeli left-wing parties over the years. She has served in the Knesset and on the Tel Aviv City Council, and was a Tel Aviv-Yafo deputy mayor, responsible for social services. One of his sons, Assi Dayan, was an actor and a movie director. [90] Another son, novelist Ehud Dayan, who was cut out of his father's will, wrote a book critical of his father months after he died, mocking his military, writing, and political skills, calling him a philanderer, and accusing him of greed. In his book, Ehud accused his father even of making money from his battle with cancer. He also lamented having recited Kaddish for his father "three times too often for a man who never observed half the Ten Commandments". [91] [92]

Death and legacy

Dayan's grave in Nahalal Cemetery Keverdayan1.jpg
Dayan's grave in Nahalal Cemetery

The Telem party won two seats in the 1981 elections, but Dayan died shortly thereafter, in Tel Aviv, from a massive heart attack. He had been in ill-health since 1980, after he was diagnosed with colon cancer later that year. He is buried in Nahalal in the moshav (a collective village) where he was raised. Following his death, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, arranged that the yearlong memorial service of kaddish be recited in honor of Dayan. [93] Dayan bequeathed his personal belongings to his bodyguard. In 2005, his eye patch was offered for sale on eBay with a starting bid of US$75,000. [94]

Dayan was a complex character; his opinions were never strictly black and white. He had few close friends; his mental brilliance and charismatic manner were combined with cynicism and lack of restraint. Ariel Sharon noted about Dayan:

He would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more had to be rejected; the remaining two, however, were brilliant.

He had courage amounting to insanity, as well as displays of a lack of responsibility. I would not say the same about his civil courage. Once Ben Gurion had asked me—what do I think of the decision to appoint Dayan as the Minister of Agriculture in his government. I said that it is important that Dayan sits in every government because of his brilliant mind—but never as prime minister. Ben Gurion asked: "why not as prime minister?". I replied then: "because he does not accept responsibility". [95]

In 1969, during an address to the students at Technion University in Haifa, Dayan regretted the fact that students are unfamiliar with the Arab villages that once inhabited the land: [96] "We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing... a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat – in the place of Jibta, Sarid - in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua - in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." [97]

Dayan combined a kibbutznik's secular identity and pragmatism with a deep love and appreciation for the Hebrew Bible, [98] the Jewish people and the land of Israel—but not an orthodox religious identification. In one recollection, having seen rabbis flocking on the Temple Mount shortly after Jerusalem was captured in 1967, he asked, "What is this? The Vatican?" Dayan later ordered to give administrative control of the Temple Mount over to the Waqf, a Muslim council. [99] [100]

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Mask, acquired by Dayan from Hirbat Duma, presently in Israel Museum -7000 Horvat Duma Mask 01 Tahunian Culture Israel Museum Jerusalem anagoria.jpg
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Mask, acquired by Dayan from Hirbat Duma, presently in Israel Museum

Dayan was an author and described himself as an amateur archaeologist, the latter hobby leading to significant controversy, as his amassing of historical artifacts, often with the help of his soldiers, seemed to be in breach of a number of laws. Yigael Yadin remarked after one incident: "I know who did it, and I am not going to say who it is, but if I catch him, I'll poke out his other eye, too." Some of his activities in this regard, whether illegal digging, looting of sites or commerce of antiquities, have been detailed by R. Kletter from the Israel Antiquities Authority. [101]

American science-fiction writer Poul Anderson published his novel Ensign Flandry at the time when Moshe Dayan's international renown and admiration for him in Israel were at their highest. The far-future Galactic Empire described in the book includes a planet called "Dayan", inhabited by Jews.

Awards and decorations

Independence war ribbon.svg Sinai war ribbon.svg Legion Honneur GO ribbon.svg
Legion of Honour (Grand Officer)

Published works

References

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  3. Morris, Benny (2001). Righteous Victims . Vintage Books. p.  684. ISBN   9780679744757.
  4. Shabbatai Teveth (1973). Moshe Dayan: the soldier, the man, the legend . Houghton Mifflin. p.  1. ISBN   9780395154755.
  5. "Miriam Baratz". Jewish Women's Archive.
  6. Taslitt, Israel Isaac (1969). "Soldier of Israel: the story of General Moshe Dayan". Funk and Wagnalls. p. 8.
  7. Giulio Meotti (2011). A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism. ReadHowYouWant.com. p. 147. ISBN   9781459617414. Even atheist and socialist Israelis like David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir were marked by the stories and legends of King David and the prophets. In other words, their lives had been shaped by Hebron.
  8. Tariq Ali (2003). The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2nd ed.). Verso. p.  10. ISBN   9781859844571. Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan were self-proclaimed atheists.
  9. Teveth, Shabtai (1974) Moshe Dayan. The soldier, the man, the legend. Quartet Books. ISBN   0-7043-1080-5. pp. 124–36.
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  11. 1 2 3 4 "Letters describing Dayan losing his eye to be auctioned". The Times of Israel .
  12. Cited by Katzberg, 1988
  13. "Letters describing Dayan losing his eye to be auctioned". Times of Israel . 27 July 2015. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
  14. Dayan, Moshe (1976) Moshe Dayan. Story of my Life, William Morrow. ISBN   0-688-03076-9. p. 80.
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  16. Story of My Life, pp. 88, 89. Moshe Montag received me courteously but with little enthusiasm.
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  30. Morris, Border Wars, Page 126. "Every stranger found ... will be shot without interrogation." 4 June 1949.
  31. Morris, Border Wars, Page 191. possibly due to pilots having fun, "more likely" authorized by Dayan.
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  88. JTA, 6/28/1973 Dayan Surprise Wedding Neighbors Recruited
  89. Dayan, Yael. My Father, His Daughter, Littlehampton Book Services, 1986, ISBN   978-0-297-78922-2
  90. "Israeli actor director Assi Dayan suffers severe heart attack" Ha'aretz , 17 November 2009
  91. Anchorage Daily News : 26 May 1982. "Dayan denounced by eldest son".
  92. "Son dismisses father's talents" The New York Times , 28 May 1982
  93. "Rebbe", Telushkin, Joseph. HarperCollins 2014, p. 135
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  97. Said, Edward (1992). The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN   9780099967804.
  98. The following citation gives an example for his combination of these different views: "'there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few'. (1 Sam. 14:6) ... The Lord can save even with a few, but these few need strong arms and legs". (Dayan, Moshe (1978) Living with the Bible. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN   0-297-77528-6. p. 157.)
  99. "Israel caught in a trap of its own making". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 26 July 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
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Sources

Further reading