Yael Dayan

Yael Dayan was born on February 12, 1939, in Nahalal, then in Mandatory Palestine, to Moshe and Ruth Dayan.[1][4] She was the eldest of their three children, followed by Udi, who became a sculptor, and Assi, who became a filmmaker.[1] Her grandfather, Shemuel Dayan, served in the First Knesset.[2] Within the family she was known as “Yula.”[4]

Dayan was seven years older than Assi and assumed substantial responsibility for her younger brothers.[3] She later described that responsibility in parental terms: “I myself served as a substitute parent for Udi and Assi.”[3] Her relationship with her father and her experience as the daughter of prominent parents subsequently became subjects of both her fiction and autobiographical writing.[3]

She advanced quickly through school, skipping grades and completing elementary school at 12 and high school at 16½.[4] Her writing career began before her formal education ended: while still in high school, she started contributing newspaper columns.[1] She later studied international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and life sciences at the Open University.[2][6]

Dayan enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 1956, completed an officers’ course, commanded recruits, and worked with new immigrants.[4] She also served in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and left the army with the rank of captain.[6] Her military experiences supplied material for her first novel and remained a subject of her later reporting and nonfiction.[4][2]

Dayan’s first novel, New Face in the Mirror, appeared in 1959, when she was 20, and brought her early recognition.[4][2] Written initially in English, it portrayed a young female Israeli soldier from a military family and drew on Dayan’s army experiences.[4][2] She dedicated the book to her parents; its fictional protagonist, Ariel, provided a way to explore experiences associated with military service and life as the daughter of famous parents.[3]

The novel received praise for its honesty, intensity, and command of English, but its reception in Israel was more contentious.[7][4] Its Hebrew translation caused a stir, and some readers regarded the first-person story of the officer Ariel Ron as excessively permissive or autobiographical.[4] Serialization in Maariv prompted angry letters from readers.[4] The book thus brought Dayan public attention not only as a young novelist but also through reactions to its treatment of a young woman’s personal and military life.[7][4]

She continued writing fiction and nonfiction in both English and Hebrew, eventually producing nine books.[7][4] Her works included Envy the Frightened, Dust, A Soldier’s Diary, Death Had Two Sons, and Three Weeks in October.[2] Other published English renderings of her titles include Envy the Fearful, Two Sons for Death, Sinai, June 1967: Personal Diary, and Three Weeks of Autumn.[1] Her bibliography also included I Have Something to Say.[1]

Alongside her books, Dayan maintained a newspaper career, contributing columns and articles to Yediot Aharonot and Maariv.[7][1] She worked as a journalist at Yediot Aharonot from 1965 to 1980 while continuing to write books.[8] Her reporting during the 1967 Six-Day War took her to the Sinai front, where she was attached to Ariel Sharon’s Division 38.[4] Her dispatches addressed battles and victory but also described exhausted and conflicted Israeli soldiers, as well as the humanity of enemy soldiers and prisoners.[4]

Family relationships became an explicit subject in My Father, His Daughter, her book about Moshe Dayan and her relationship with him.[3] Published in the mid-1980s, it included frank accounts of his affairs and criticism of his conduct.[7] In her later book Mimneged, she offered an openly personal, autobiographical account of her own life and family.[3] Looking back on the importance of literature in that book, she wrote, “The books were my ticket into the world.”[3]

From the late 1970s, Dayan participated in peace movements and organizations, including Peace Now, Bat Shalom, the International Center for Peace, and the Council for Peace and Security.[2] Her work outside elected office also involved human-rights organizations, particularly those concerned with women’s and LGBTQ rights.[1][2] These activities preceded her eventual election to the Knesset in 1992.[2]

At the American-Israel Dialogue on July 31, 1984, Dayan spoke as an author and journalist about feminism, public priorities, and Jewish identity.[9] Her attempts to enter the Knesset in 1984 and 1988 did not secure her a seat.[7][4]

Her remarks at the dialogue set out her priorities at that point in her public life.[9] She opened by declaring, “I must begin by declaring that I am not a feminist and that I appear here as some kind of devil’s advocate.”[9] She placed the struggle for women’s rights below what she then regarded as more urgent questions, including Israel’s survival and the character of its society.[9] She explained that she had room within her party and the political system to pursue those priorities and suggested that she took her own equality for granted.[9]

In the same discussion, Dayan described Jewishness as non-optional for her: she had been born Jewish and lived in Israel.[9] Although she was not religiously observant, she celebrated Jewish festivals, raised her children with knowledge of Jewish heritage, and said she knew the Bible by heart.[9] She also questioned whether Jewish identity necessarily implied a mission to spread Jewish values or to address the world’s problems.[9]

Her subsequent parliamentary career placed women’s equality and the rights of sexual minorities at the center of much of her work.[2] Within Labor, she belonged to the party’s reformist wing and supported peace with the Palestinians, including proposals for a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation.[8] She also advocated a Palestinian state and participated in meetings with Palestinians, including Palestinian women.[7][2]

Dayan entered the Thirteenth Knesset in 1992 on the Israel Labor Party list and served through the Fifteenth Knesset, leaving parliament after the 2003 election.[2] Her tenure encompassed three full terms, or approximately ten and a half years.[7][4] She served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, while women’s status became a principal focus of her parliamentary activity.[3][6]

In her first term, Dayan chaired the Knesset committee devoted to advancing women’s status.[4][10] She worked across party lines with Likud member Limor Livnat; the two served in rotation as chairs of the committee established in 1992.[10] Committee members developed subcommittees and legislative initiatives concerning women’s employment, military service, education, and other areas.[10]

Dayan chaired the women’s status committee twice, including service during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Knessets.[2][6] Working with parliamentary colleagues, she pursued initiatives concerning gender equality, women’s employment, women in the military, and violence against women.[10] She also chaired subcommittees addressing violence against women and gay and lesbian rights, as well as a parliamentary inquiry committee examining the murder of women by their partners.[4][6]

A major outcome of this work was the Sexual Harassment Prevention Law, enacted in 1998.[5] Dayan initiated the legislation, which was submitted by all the women then serving in the Knesset.[5] Its stated purposes were to protect human dignity, freedom, and privacy and to promote equality between the sexes.[5] The law defined several categories of prohibited conduct and imposed preventive responsibilities on employers and higher-education institutions.[5]

The law’s development reflected a broader parliamentary effort rather than an undertaking carried out by one parliamentarian alone: it was submitted by all the women then serving in the Knesset.[5] Dayan’s committee leadership and cross-party work formed part of that wider legislative process.[10][5] Looking back in 2022, she said the measure had emerged from “a difficult reality” and had encountered “very serious opposition.”[7]

Her legislative work also encompassed the Crime Victims’ Rights Law, the Women’s Equal Rights Law, minimum-sentence provisions for sexual and violent offenses, and the Anti-Stalking Law.[4] In 2000, she relinquished her seat on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee as part of a political arrangement that helped secure support for an amendment to the Women’s Equal Rights Law.[10] The amendment set out principles of full equality between women and men in the spirit of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.[10]

Beyond these responsibilities, Dayan chaired the Knesset delegation to the European Parliament and headed the parliamentary lobby for the environment.[6][10] Her committee service thus extended to defense, constitutional questions, international parliamentary relations, and environmental issues alongside her sustained work on equality.[3][6] In a 2015 reflection on her public career, she identified the struggle against violence against women as the work of which she was most proud, while emphasizing that the struggle remained unfinished.[7]

In 1993, Dayan convened a Knesset event that brought LGBTQ community representatives into parliament and established a subcommittee to address discrimination based on sexual orientation.[11] She publicly attended a gay pride event and advocated the removal of stigma and inequality affecting gay men and lesbians.[7][2] Her parliamentary activity included efforts to expand the rights of LGBTQ people serving in the IDF.[7][11]

Dayan helped change military regulations that discriminated against LGBTQ people and worked on an amendment to the prohibition on defamation so that it included denigration based on sex or sexual orientation.[11] These initiatives accompanied her committee work against discrimination and her public support for the community.[11] In 2022, the Ministry for Social Equality recognized that work with a lifetime achievement award.[6]

Her peace advocacy included campaigning to repeal the law prohibiting Israeli contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization.[8] In August 1992, she met Nabil Sha’ath, a political adviser to Yasser Arafat, in The Hague.[8] On January 29, 1993, ten days after repeal of the contact prohibition, she traveled to Tunis and met Arafat.[8] The meeting took place without her informing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin beforehand.[7]

Dayan remained involved with peace organizations and initiatives beyond her parliamentary service, including the Geneva Initiative.[1] She supported the Geneva Document signed by Yossi Beilin and Yaser Abed Rabbo on December 1, 2003.[2] Her involvement in these efforts accompanied continuing work on women’s rights and human rights.[1]

Dayan’s parliamentary career ended after she failed to secure a sufficiently high position on Labor’s list for the 2003 election.[2] She and Yossi Beilin then joined the Meretz list, on which she was placed twelfth.[2] Meretz won six seats, leaving her outside the Knesset.[2]

She moved into local politics later that year, winning election to the Tel Aviv municipality in October 2003.[2] She subsequently became deputy mayor and held the welfare portfolio.[1][2] Her municipal responsibilities continued the welfare-related dimension of a public career already concerned with violence, inequality, and the rights of vulnerable groups.[1][2]

In 2008, Dayan left the Meretz municipal list and joined Mayor Ron Huldai’s Tel Aviv Ahahat list.[1] After the election, she became chair of the city council while continuing to hold the welfare portfolio.[1] She was not included on the list that contested the 2013 municipal election.[1]

During the 1967 war, Dayan met Dov Sion, then a lieutenant colonel serving in headquarters, and they married after the war.[7][4] Sion later held the rank of brigadier general.[3] Dayan retained her family name after marriage, and the couple had two children, Dan and Rachel.[7][3] Sion died in 2003 after a serious illness.[1]

Dayan’s relationship with her younger brother Assi remained marked by the protective role she had assumed in childhood.[3] On June 14, 1982, during the first week of the Lebanon War, she wrote to him while he was serving in the reserves with a paratroopers brigade.[3] Her letter described family members waiting anxiously for news and conveyed their hope that he would return safely.[3] “The main thing is that you come back safe and sound,” she wrote, calling the expression “primitive and basic” but appropriate to the moment.[3]

The letter also deferred discussion of “the values and content of the war” until Assi came home.[3] A folder in his archive preserves two items concerning the siblings: this wartime letter and a poem he wrote for Yael’s sixtieth birthday in 1999.[3] The surviving items record both her concern for him during military service and his later birthday tribute to her.[3]

In later years, Dayan suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and often required supplemental oxygen and a wheelchair.[7][4] She nevertheless continued attending protests and speaking publicly.[7] Describing that determination, she said she could still “wheel there and be present, and take a microphone and speak.”[7] In July 2018, she attended a demonstration supporting gay rights and addressed it from her wheelchair.[12]

Dayan died on May 18, 2024, aged 85.[1][4] She was survived by her children Rachel and Dan and four grandchildren; her husband and both brothers had died before her.[4] She was buried beside Dov Sion at Kiryat Shaul cemetery, whereas her parents and brothers were buried in Nahalal.[3]

The 1998 Sexual Harassment Prevention Law and Dayan’s leadership of the Knesset committee on women’s status were central institutional outcomes of her parliamentary work.[10][5] Her contribution combined legislative advocacy with committee leadership and cooperation across party lines.[10][5] Her decision to exchange a prestigious defense committee seat for support for equal-rights legislation in 2000 was another concrete expression of those priorities.[10]

Her work for LGBTQ equality included bringing community representatives into the Knesset, establishing a parliamentary framework to examine discrimination, and helping change discriminatory military rules.[11] The lifetime achievement award she received in 2022 formally recognized her contribution to the community.[6] Even after illness restricted her mobility, her continued participation in demonstrations maintained her public involvement in these causes.[11][12]

Dayan also left a body of fiction, journalism, wartime reporting, and autobiographical writing.[7][3] Her books explored military experience and the personal dimensions of belonging to a prominent Israeli family, while Mimneged returned explicitly to her life and family relationships.[3][2] Her first novel, the personal account of her father, and her later autobiographical work preserved different stages of that literary engagement.[3]

Dayan’s writing about her father generated public controversy and division within the family.[7] My Father, His Daughter discussed his affairs and criticized aspects of his conduct, while his will left most of his estate to his second wife, Rachel.[7] In a published account of her response to his injunction that his children continue working the land and fighting, Dayan wrote, “I felt like a person banished from paradise, a curse more than a blessing.”[13]

Her 1993 meeting with Arafat provoked Rabin’s anger, and her advocacy for LGBTQ rights also drew opposition in the Knesset.[7][8] During a 1993 speech calling for greater rights for LGBTQ service members, she suggested that King David was gay, angering some lawmakers.[7] In October 1996, during a visit to Hebron, right-wing activist Israel Lederman poured hot tea on her face; he was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.[1]