Background

Ethnicity: His parents were Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Zhashkiv.

Moshe Dayan was born on May 20, 1915 in kibbutz Deganya Alef, Acre Sanjak, Ottoman Empire (nowadays Israel) and raised in Nahalal. He was the eldest son of Shemuel Dayan, who had been a member of the First Knesset, and Devorah Dayan.

Education

Dayan studied at the agricultural school in Nahalal. Later in life, he attended courses at the universities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He also pursued military studies at the Camberley Staff College in Britain.

Career

As a young man, Dayan served as a watchman in Nahalal's fields, and later joined the Haganah. During the disturbances of 1936 - 1939, he served with the special Jewish police force in the Jezreel Valley and Galilee. He was commander of a unit of the Haganah field squads in 1938, and participated in the operations of the special night squads commanded by Orde Wingate.

Dayan was arrested in 1939, in an illegal Haganah commanders' course, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for possession of illegal firearms. Released in 1941, he joined an auxiliary force of the Haganah that cooperated with the British army in the conquest of Lebanon from Vichy forces. After joining the Palmaḥ, he helped British intelligence set up a broadcasting network, the purpose of which was clandestine operations behind enemy lines in the event that Palestine fell into German hands.

During the 1948 - 1949 War of Independence, Dayan commanded the defense of Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley. In the spring of 1948 he was named commander of a mechanized battalion that fought in Ramleh and Lydda, and helped halt the Egyptian forces on the Southern front. In August 1948 Dayan was appointed commander of the Jerusalem front and reached a local cease-fire agreement with the commander of the Arab Legion in the area. In this period Dayan was viewed as Mapai's answer to generals such as Yigal Allon, who had emerged from Mapam and Aḥdut ha-Avodah. Dayan and Allon remained competitors, first in the military sphere and later in politics, for the rest of their lives.

In the spring of 1949 Dayan participated in the armistice agreement talks between Israel and Jordan at Rhodes. In October 1949 he was appointed commander of the Southern Command, and in June 1952 commander of the Northern Command. In the same period he attended a senior officers' course in Great Britain. He was appointed chief of operations at General Headquarters in December 1952, and the following year was appointed as Israel's fourth chief of staff, a post he held until January 1958.

Dayan became Chief of Staff during a time of severe Arab belligerence and concentrated on improving the military capabilities of the IDF. Despite the military armistice of 1949, the surrounding Arab nations remained hostile, maintaining a maritime blockade, reinforcing an economic boycott, promoting political and propaganda warfare and supporting terrorism in Israel. The Israeli government was unable to contain the terrorist violence. Dayan insisted on strong retaliation operations. His view was that the Arabs saw terrorism as a stage of war, and the longer the terrorist attacks continued, the longer the Arabs had to build up their military strength. He wanted to force the Arabs into an open battle before they gained full military power.

Under Dayan's command, the Israeli military launched raids in Gaza and other retaliatory missions, causing heavy casualties to the Egyptians, Syrians, and other Arab populations. On October 29, 1956, Dayan led Israel's Suez campaign, an invasion of the Sinai Peninsula after Egypt, Syria and Jordan signed a pact stating as their goal the destruction of Israel.

Dayan retired from active army service in 1958 and spent the following year attending courses at the universities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In the fall of 1959 he was elected to the Fourth Knesset on the Mapai list. In the government formed by David Ben-Gurion after the election, Dayan was appointed minister of agriculture, a post he held until November 1964.

Dayan supported Ben-Gurion's position in the Lavon Affair and resigned from Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's government to join Ben-Gurion against this background. In July 1965 Dayan broke away with Ben-Gurion from Mapai, and was one of the founders of Rafi and elected on its list to the Sixth Knesset.

In August 1966 he made an independent study tour of war-torn Vietnam and wrote of his experience in a diary, which he published. Following public pressure, Dayan was appointed minister of defense on the eve of the outbreak of the Six-Day War in June 1967, even though Prime Minister Eshkol, who had also served as minister of defense up to that point, had wanted to appoint Allon to the post. When the Syrians were shelling Israeli villages in Upper Galilee, Dayan was the one who made the decision to launch a full-scale attack against the Syrians. It was also Dayan who ended the fighting by arranging a cease-fire with Syria through Chief of Staff of the UN Observer Corps, General Odd Bull. Dayan was seen as "a solo performer, partly admired, partly feared for his political stunts."

After the war, Dayan controlled the territories occupied by the Israeli Army. He opened the borders for Arab residents of the territories to travel to Arab countries, while at the same time maintaining order and security in Israeli-held areas.

In the year after the Six-Day War Dayan actively supported the formation of the Israel Labor Party by Mapai, Aḥdut ha-Avodah, and Rafi. Dayan was still minister of defense on the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, and was widely blamed for the country's lack of preparedness. Even though the Agranat Commission established to investigate the background to the outbreak of the war (or the meḥdal, as the failure was termed in Hebrew) did not criticize Dayan, and did not find anything wrong in his conduct, after Golda Meir resigned as prime minister following the publication of the Committee's interim report, Yitzhak Rabin, who formed a government in June 1974, did not include Dayan in it.

Following the 1977 "political upheaval" (mahapakh) Dayan, elected to the Ninth Knesset on the Alignment list, decided to leave the Alignment and join the government formed by Menaḥem Begin as foreign minister, remaining an independent MK in the Knesset until May 1981, when he formed the Telem parliamentary group.

In October 1979 Dayan resigned from the government in protest against the appointment of Joseph Burg as head of the team to negotiate an autonomy plan for the Palestinians with the Egyptians and formed the new Telem Party and was its representative until he died on October 16, 1981.

During his life, Dayan wrote four books: Diary of the Sinai Campaign (1966), Mappah Hadasha-Yahasim Aherim (1969) on problems after the Six-Day War, Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life (1976) and Breakthrough: A Personal Account of the Egypt-Israel Peace Negotiations (1981).

Achievements

• Moshe Dayan, an Israeli military leader and a crusader for peace, played a key role in four wars and helped negotiate the peace talks with Egypt that led to the historic visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in November 1977, to the signing of the Camp David Accords in September 1978, and to the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty in March 1979.
  
  As Chief of Staff, Dayan emerged a hero in the 1956 war with Egypt. As a military planner, he was instrumental in the strategy that enabled Israel to capture vast areas in the 1967 war.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Living with the Bible

    (Illustrated, personalized recreation of the dramatic even...)

    1978
  • Breakthrough

    (A Personal Account of the Egypt-Israel Peace Negotiations)

    1981
  • Diary of the Sinai Campaign 1965
  • Story of My Life: An Autobiography 1976

Religion

Dayan was a Jewish atheist. He combined a kibbutznik's secular identity and pragmatism with a deep love and appreciation for the Jewish people and the land of Israel - but not a 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? Vatican?"

Politics

In 1959 Dayan was elected to the Knesset (Parliament) as a member of Mapai, a party within the Israel Labour Party coalition. He left the party in 1965 during a political conflict between factions led by Ben-Gurion and by the new prime minister, Levi Eshkol.

Dayan was again elected to the Knesset in 1965 as a member of Ben-Gurion’s new splinter party, Rafi (Alliance of Israel’s Workers). During the years following the war (1968 - 1977), Dayan was the leader of the hawkish camp within the Labor government. In 1977 - 1981 he sat as an independent MK.

In 1981, towards the end of the Ninth Knesset, he formed a new party, Telem. Telem advocated a continuation of the peace process on the basis of the Camp David Accords; continued Israeli military presence in areas vital for Israel's defense; opposition to any territorial compromise in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, on the one hand, and the extension of Israeli sovereignty to them, on the other; self-administration for the Palestinians in the territories, on the one hand, and continued Jewish settlement on State lands and land legally purchased. Telem received only two mandates in the elections to the Tenth Knesset.

As minister of agriculture, Dayan met frequently with Arab farmers and tried to give them every assistance. He always held that the Arabs of Israel should have equal rights and bear equal responsibilities with the other citizens of Israel.

As minister of defense, Dayan devised a relatively liberal policy for the Palestinian population in the territories, following a policy of "open bridges" to Jordan, enabling the movement of both people and goods. Unlike Allon, who started to advocate a peace plan with Jordan based on territorial compromise and the establishment of a Jordanian-Palestinian state that would include most of the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Dayan preferred a functional solution that would create a Jordanian-Israeli condominium in the territories.

Views

Moshe Dayan was single-minded in his passionate Israeli nationalism. His passionate concern for Israel and its future continued until the end of his life. In ''Breakthrough: a Personal Account of the Egypt-Israel Peace Negotations,'' he said his country would allow no ''foreign sovereignty'' on the West Bank. He also said that Israeli military forces and settlements must remain and that no Palestinian nation should be allowed.

In his last published writing, an article that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, he expressed some uncertainty about future Israeli-Egyptian relations in light of the death of the Egyptian President, Anwar el-Sadat.

He said he believed that ''the new Government of Egypt will carry through'' the letter of the peace agreement, but added, ''As for its spirit, that is another question completely.''

Quotations: "To aim and hit, you need one eye only, and one good finger."

"There is no more Palestine. Finished."

"It was in our power to set a high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying."

"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."

"I have only one eye. Do you want me to look at the road or at the speedometer?"

''A commander's place is with his men during a bitter withdrawal. Even more than in time of conquest.''

''My parents, who came from another country, sought to make the Israel of their imagination, drawn from the Bible, their physical homeland. In somewhat the reverse way, I sought to give my real and tangible homeland the added dimension of historical depth.''

Personality

Dayan had sides to his character that belied his image as a tough, unemotional fighter. However, Dayan's attitude toward prisoners of war and Arab civilians in the territories occupied after the Six-Day War attested to his strong sense of justice. While energetically combating terrorist activities, he maintained a liberal policy toward the people of the occupied areas, giving them as much freedom as possible to run their own affairs and allowing commercial and social relations with Jordan.

Like other world leaders, Dayan was sometimes criticized and sometimes out of favor. But he was a remarkably resilient man who seemed blessed by good fortune. Prime Minister Golda Meir called him ''altogether too lucky.'' An Israeli writer, Amos Elon, noted that he was ''always landing on his feet.''

Though Mr. Dayan was, by and large, a hero to the Israeli people, he was generally a loner. Mr. Elon called him ''this gloomy, lonely, gifted man - too cunning, too admired, too hated, too ambiguous, too glamorous, too extravagant, too famous.''

Dayan had a great interest in archaeology and built up a vast collection of Holy Land antiquities that nourished his near-mystic sense of Israel's past. When he was in his home in a suburb of Tel Aviv he liked to relax in its large yard, which was filled with antiquities he had unearthed. Over years of diligent archeological activity, Mr. Dayan put together one of the world's most valuable and extensive private collections of ancient Middle East relics. It included sarcophagi, burial urns and ancient plaques that he had removed from burial sites.

Dayan spoke Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Physical Characteristics: Moshe Dayan had a long youthful face, forceful mouth, and distinctive high cheekbones. In the course of the conquest of Lebanon from Vichy forces Dayan was wounded, and lost his left eye. The eye patch Dayan started wearing from that time on, became his trademark.

Dayan was vulnerable physically, almost frail, a short man, continually beset by ailments. He admitted to being hard of hearing. Old wounds caused him pain. Sometimes he wore a back brace. ''I need a completely new body,'' he wearily told an interviewer in 1978. ''I need parts replacing, the whole thing. My eye, my back.'' In 1979, Dayan was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Quotes from others about the person

• Gideon Rafael: "Rocking the boat is his favourite tactic, not to overturn it, but to sway it sufficiently for the helmsman to lose his grip or for some of its unwanted passengers to fall overboard."
  
  Ariel Sharon: "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."

Interests

• archaeology

Connections

Moshe Dayan was married twice. His first wife, Ruth Dayan, divorced Moshe in 1971 after 36 years of marriage due to his numerous extramarital affairs. Two years after the divorce, Dayan married Rachel Korem. Moshe Dayan is the father of three children - Yael, Assi and Ehud.

Father:

Shmuel Dayan

(August 1891 - August 11, 1968)

Shmuel Dayan was a Zionist activist during the British Mandate of Palestine and an Israeli politician who served in the first three Knessets.

Mother:

Devorah Dayan

Spouse:

Rachel Korem

Brother:

Zohar Dayan

ex-spouse:

Ruth Dayan

(born March 6, 1917)

Ruth Dayan is the founder of the Maskit fashion house and is active in many social causes.

Daughter:

Yael Dayan

(born February 12, 1939)

Yael Dayan is an Israeli politician and author. She served as a member of the Knesset between 1992 and 2003, and from 2008 to 2013 was the chair of Tel Aviv city council. She is best known in Israel for her book, My Father, His Daughter, about her relationship with her father.

Son:

Assi Dayan

(November 23, 1945 - May 1, 2014)

Asaf "Assi" Dayan was an Israeli film director, actor, screenwriter, and producer.

Son:

Ehud Dayan

(1942 - November 19, 2017)

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".

References

• Moshe Dayan Martin van Creveld, author of the critically acclaimed Men, Women, and War, turns his attention to one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. This unflinching biography paints a complete portrait of Dayan the military man and statesman.
  2004
• Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East Writing with a novelist’s command of narrative and a historian’s grasp of fact and motive, Michael B. Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities - Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin - rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed - in the Middle East and in the world.
  2002
• Moshe Dayan: Israel's Controversial Hero In this memorable biography, Mordechai Bar-On, Dayan's IDF bureau chief, offers an intimate view of Dayan's private life, public career, and political controversies, set against an original analysis of Israel's political environment from pre-Mandate Palestine through the early 1980s.
  2012
• Moshe Dayan: The Soldier, The Man, The Legend A book by Shabtai Teveth
  1972
• Warrior Statesman: The Life of Moshe Dayan A book by Robert Slater profiles Dayan's early years on Palestine's first Kibbutz, creation of the Israeli Defense Force, and role in the Camp David negotiations
  1991