 Moshe
Dayan (Hebrew: משה דיין, born 20 May 1915, died 16 October
1981) was an Israeli military leader and politician. The
fourth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces
(1953–1958), he became a fighting symbol to the world of the
new State of Israel.
Early life
Moshe Dayan was born on Kibbutz Degania Alef
near the shores of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) in
pre-Mandate Palestine. His parents were Shmuel and Devorah,
Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He was the second child to
be born on the kibbutz (after Gideon Baratz). At the age of
14, he joined the newly formed Jewish militia known as the
Haganah. One of his military heroes was the British Zionist
officer Orde Wingate, whom he served as second-in-command.
World War II
He was arrested by the British ten years later
in 1939 (when the Haganah was outlawed), but released after
two years in February 1941, as part of Haganah cooperation
with the British during World War II.
Dayan was assigned to a small Australian-Palmach-Arab
reconnaissance task force, formed in preparation for the
Allied invasion of Syria and Lebanon and attached to the
Australian 7th Division. Using his home kibbutz of Hanita as
a forward base, the unit frequently infiltrated Vichy French
Lebanon, wearing traditional Arab dress, on covert
surveillance missions.
On June 7, the night before the invasion, the
unit crossed the border and secured two bridges over the
Litani River. When they were not relieved as expected, at
04:00 on June 8, the unit perceived that it was exposed to
possible attack and — on its own initiative — assaulted a
nearby Vichy police station, capturing it in a firefight. A
few hours later, as Dayan was using binoculars they were
struck by a French bullet, propelling metal and glass
fragments into his left eye and causing it severe damage.
Six hours passed before he could be evacuated and Dayan lost
the eye. In addition, the damage to the extra ocular muscles
was such that Dayan could not be fitted with a glass eye,
and he was forced to adopt the black eye patch that became
his trademark. On the recommendation of an Australian
officer, he received the Distinguished Service Order, one of
the British Commonwealth's highest military honors (and is
a medal which is awarded to junior officers only in
exceptional circumstances).
In the years immediately following, the
disability caused him some psychological pain. Dayan wrote
in his biography: "I reflected with considerable misgivings
on my future as a cripple without a skill, trade, or
profession to provide for my family." He added that he was
"ready to make any effort and stand any suffering, if only I
could get rid of my black eye patch. The attention it drew
was intolerable to me. I preferred to shut myself up at
home, doing anything, rather than encounter the reactions of
people wherever I went."
Military commander
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Dayan occupied
various important positions, first as the commander of the
defense in the Jordan valley; he was then given command over
a number of military units on the central front. He was
extremely well-liked by Israel's founding Prime Minister,
David Ben-Gurion and became his protégé, together with
Shimon Peres (a future Prime Minister and President).
After the war, Dayan began to rise rapidly
through the ranks. From 1953 to 1958, he was the Chief of
Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. In this capacity, he
personally commanded the Israeli forces fighting in the
Sinai during the 1956 Suez Crisis. It was during Dayan's
tenure as Chief of Staff that he delivered his famous eulogy
of Roi Rutenberg, a young Israeli killed in 1956. |
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