Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan was born on May 20, 1915, at Deganya Alef near Lake Kinneret. His parents, Shmuel and Devorah Dayan, were Second Aliyah pioneers, and he was the first child born in the community.[1][3] When he was about six, the family moved to Nahalal in the Jezreel Valley, where he grew up amid agricultural work and the security activity of the Jewish community.[3][4]

At about age 14, Dayan joined the Haganah and later served with the Jewish Settlement Police and as a guide for British forces during the Arab Revolt.[1][7] British authorities arrested him with 42 other Haganah trainees and commanders in October 1939 for illegal possession of weapons. Their ten-year sentences were reduced to five years, and Dayan was released with the group on February 17, 1941, after approximately sixteen months in custody.[4] His prison correspondence with his wife Ruth included both authorized letters and notes passed through intermediaries.[4]

Dayan learned guerrilla tactics under British Captain Charles Orde Wingate in the Special Night Squads, which fought Arab rebel bands during the 1936–1939 revolt.[1] In June 1941, he joined a British-led operation against Vichy French forces in Syria and Lebanon. While using binoculars to locate enemy troops, he was struck in the left eye and hand. Hospital records described broken nasal bones and injuries to three fingers; he remained blind in the eye and thereafter wore his famous black patch.[4][5]

Dayan later cooperated with British intelligence on a broadcasting network intended for clandestine operations if Axis forces reached Mandatory Palestine.[1] His early experience consequently included policing, irregular warfare, field command, and intelligence work.

During the 1948 War of Independence, Dayan first supervised the defense of Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley. He later commanded a battalion that attacked Lydda, helped halt Egyptian forces on the southern front, and was appointed commander of the Jerusalem front in August 1948.[1] In 1949, he participated in armistice negotiations with Jordanian representatives at Rhodes.[1]

Dayan advanced rapidly in the new Israel Defense Forces and became its fourth Chief of Staff in 1953, at age 38. David Ben-Gurion later called him Israel's “best chief of staff,” a judgment that reportedly angered some of Dayan's predecessors.[8]

Dayan served as IDF Chief of Staff from 1953 to 1958. He favored forceful retaliation against cross-border terrorism, reasoning that prolonged low-level conflict gave neighboring Arab states time to strengthen their armies for a larger war.[1] On October 29, 1956, he led Israel's invasion of the Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Crisis. The campaign established his international reputation as a military commander, and his account, Diary of the Sinai Campaign, appeared in 1966.[1]

Later scholarship has examined how Dayan's campaign planning, decision-making, and command style influenced Israeli security doctrine and civil-military relations.[9]

In 1966, during a low point in his political career, Dayan traveled to South Vietnam as a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. After meeting officials in Paris, London, and Washington, he spent two months accompanying U.S. forces in the field.[10] He concluded that the conflict would last far longer than American policymakers expected and called it “a lost cause,” arguing that military force could damage the Vietcong but could not eliminate Vietnamese support for the North's independence struggle.[10]

After leaving the IDF in 1958, Dayan entered politics. He was elected to the Knesset in 1959 as a member of Mapai and served as Minister of Agriculture under David Ben-Gurion until 1964.[1] He resigned amid the political struggle between Ben-Gurion's faction and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, then followed Ben-Gurion into the new Rafi party in 1965.[1]

The May 1967 crisis restored Dayan to national prominence. Egypt moved forces into Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran, while public pressure mounted for stronger military leadership.[8] Eshkol appointed Dayan Defense Minister shortly before the war began, and the ensuing victory became permanently associated with his public image.[3][8]

As Defense Minister during the Six-Day War, Dayan made several important operational decisions. He authorized a full-scale attack on Syrian forces after the shelling of Israeli communities in Upper Galilee and helped arrange the cease-fire with Syria through General Odd Bull of the UN observer mission.[1] His appointment on the eve of the war and the scale of Israel's victory elevated him into an internationally recognized symbol of Israeli military strength.[3]

Dayan also established the postwar arrangements on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. He left administration of the compound in the hands of the Muslim Wakf, permitted Jewish visits but prohibited Jewish prayer, ordered the removal of an Israeli flag, and rejected a proposal to station a paratroop company there.[11] Religious and nationalist critics opposed the arrangement, which became one of the most contested legacies of his tenure.[11]

Dayan was the principal political authority involved in administering the territories captured in 1967, including the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[12] The government did not establish comprehensive strategic objectives for the territories, beyond a general intention to retain them as bargaining assets for future peace negotiations.[12] Dayan permitted Arab residents to travel to neighboring Arab countries while maintaining Israeli security control.[1]

Dayan remained Defense Minister after Golda Meir became prime minister in 1969. On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack, exposing serious failures in Israel's intelligence assessments and preparedness.[13][6]

Only three months earlier, on July 17, Dayan had told senior security officials that Israel's qualitative military advantage and post-1967 defensive lines outweighed the Arab states' numerical superiority. He estimated the numerical balance at roughly three to one and predicted, “If they start a war—they will be beaten and defeated.”[13] The early wartime breakdown of Israeli defenses and the need for emergency American arms supplies contradicted that assessment.[13]

On the night of October 5–6, Dayan contacted Shimon Peres because Meir and Chief of Staff David Elazar favored a general reserve mobilization. Dayan feared that a public call-up could be portrayed as Israeli aggression and proposed an initially discreet mobilization instead.[8]

The Agranat Commission concluded that the central prewar failure involved the lack of a timely intelligence warning and did not formally find fault with Dayan's conduct.[14][6] Public condemnation nevertheless continued, and protesters led by Captain Motti Ashkenazi demanded political accountability.[1] Accounts differ over Dayan's departure: one says he submitted his resignation to Meir, while another states that Yitzhak Rabin's subsequent government simply did not include him.[1][6] Later assessments have likewise diverged between those assigning him substantial responsibility and those emphasizing the commission's findings.[3][8]

On April 29, 1956, Roi Rotberg, the 21-year-old security officer of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was killed by fedayeen terrorists while patrolling the community's fields on horseback. His body was taken into Gaza and mutilated. Dayan, then IDF Chief of Staff, had met Rotberg a few days earlier and delivered a 238-word eulogy at his funeral.[15]

The speech linked settlement with the constant need for defense: “A generation of settlement are we, and without the steel helmet and the maw of the cannon we shall not plant a tree, nor build a house.” It concluded that the generation had “to be willing and armed, strong and unyielding, lest the sword be knocked from our fists, and our lives severed.”[15] The eulogy remained a prominent warning about the vulnerability of border communities and returned to Israeli public discussion after the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023.[16]

In 1977, Dayan accepted Prime Minister Menachem Begin's offer to become Foreign Minister despite having been elected to the Knesset as a Labor Party member.[3] He advocated separate negotiations with individual Arab states rather than a collective treaty process. In a meeting with President Jimmy Carter, he proposed negotiating with Egypt over Sinai, Syria over the Golan Heights, and Jordan over Judea and Samaria, while allowing a collective opening session before bilateral negotiations began.[17]

Dayan had begun secret contacts with Egyptian representatives in May 1977. Over the following eighteen months, he participated in talks in India, Iran, England, and Morocco, followed by negotiations at Leeds Castle and Camp David.[1] His style combined rapid initiatives with delay, compromise, and occasional intransigence.[1]

During the treaty negotiations, Dayan focused on normalization with Egypt, Israel's withdrawal from Sinai, and the relocation of Israeli military facilities. He argued that the construction of replacement airfields, rather than a difference of several months in removing settlers, would determine the withdrawal timetable.[18] In presenting the Camp David Accords to the Knesset, he stressed that they did not promise a Palestinian state, that Israeli forces would remain in Judea and Samaria, and that treaty negotiations would continue.[19]

The accords were signed on September 17, 1978, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty followed in March 1979. Dayan's ability to understand Egyptian positions and formulate compromises acceptable to Begin made him a pivotal participant in achieving the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state.[3][2]

Dayan resigned as Foreign Minister on October 22, 1979, amid disagreements with Begin over the Palestinian autonomy negotiations. His letter stated: “It is no secret to you that I differ over the technique and the substance whereby the autonomy negotiations are being conducted.”[20] He also disagreed with settlement policy, objected to being excluded from leading the autonomy talks, and believed that he was being bypassed on foreign-policy decisions.[1][20]

In 1981, Dayan formed Telem, which advocated unilateral Israeli disengagement from territories captured in 1967. The party won two Knesset seats in the June election.[1][3] Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1979, Dayan continued writing and published Breakthrough: A Personal Account of the Egypt-Israel Peace Negotiations in 1981. His earlier books included Diary of the Sinai Campaign, Mappah Hadasha-Yahasim Aherim, and Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life.[1]

Dayan died of a heart attack at a Tel Aviv hospital on October 16, 1981, at age 66. He was buried in Nahalal, the community where he had grown up.[6]

Dayan occupied senior positions at many of the decisive military and diplomatic moments of Israel's first three decades. His command during the Sinai Campaign, service as IDF Chief of Staff, and decisions as Defense Minister became important subjects in the study of Israeli strategy, leadership, and civil-military relations.[9]

His legacy also includes two sharply different forms of statecraft. The Roi Rotberg eulogy articulated the connection between Jewish settlement, national defense, and the vulnerability of border communities.[15][16] Two decades later, his secret diplomacy and work at Camp David helped secure Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab state.[3]

The Yom Kippur War permanently complicated that record. Dayan's July 1973 confidence became an enduring example of the strategic assumptions overturned by the surprise attack.[13] Although the Agranat Commission focused its findings on intelligence and military failures, public and historical debate continued over Dayan's political responsibility.[14][6] His career consequently joined military success, diplomatic achievement, strategic misjudgment, and political recovery in a single, unusually consequential public life.

The most significant controversy concerns Dayan's responsibility for Israel's lack of preparedness in 1973. The Agranat Commission did not formally find fault with him, while public protest and later accounts often assigned him substantial political responsibility.[14][6] The Jerusalem Post argues that he bore considerable responsibility; Ynet emphasizes that the commission absolved him and records conflicting assessments of his wartime influence.[3][8]

His Temple Mount policy also remained contested. By preserving Wakf administration and prohibiting Jewish prayer while allowing visits, Dayan created an arrangement criticized by religious and nationalist circles and defended by others as an attempt to prevent a religious conflict.[11]

Dayan was additionally criticized for his private acquisition of archaeological artifacts. Retrospective accounts describe unauthorized excavations and characterize some objects in his collection as stolen antiquities.[3][8]