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Dayan, Moshe (1915–1981) Israeli military
commander
The son of Ukrainian emigrants to Palestine (now mod-
ern Israel), Moshe Dayan was born in the kibbutz of
Deganyah Alef on 4 May 1915. This village was the first
in what became Israel and is known as the “mother of
all kibbutzim.” Dayan’s father, Shmuel, was a dedicated
Zionist who spent much of his time fighting local Arabs
who attacked the kibbutz’s residents. As he grew up,
Moshe Dayan served as a kibbutz guard, and when he
was only 14 he joined the Haganah, the Jewish under-
ground (and illegal) defense force formed to fight the
Arabs who were constantly attacking the Jewish settlers.
One of his teachers was Captain Charles Orde Wingate,
a British military officer who was trying to keep the Jews
and Arabs separated. During a series of riots by Arabs
against Jewish settlers, Dayan served with the special
Jewish police forces in the Galilee and the Jezreel Valley.
In 1938, he became the commander of a series of field
units known as the pluggot sadeh.
In 1939, Dayan was arrested for being a Haganah
member; tried in 1940, he was found guilty and sen-
tenced to 10 years in prison. However, he was released
in an amnesty in 1941 in exchange for joining the Brit-
ish army, then fighting in the Middle East against the
Germans in Lebanon and Syria. During one battle, he
was struck in the face by gunfire and subsequently lost
his left eye; he later became well known for the eyepatch
he wore. He nonetheless remained a key member of the
Haganah while serving with British intelligence and
then after the war.
In 1948, Israeli became an independent state, and
in the war against Arabs who invaded Israel, Dayan com-
manded troops in defense of Jewish settlements in the
Jordan valley, which included his own kibbutz of Deg-
anyah Alef. Promoted to major, he was given command
of the 89th Battalion. When Egypt attacked the newly
founded Jewish state, Dayan led an offensive against
them in the city of Lydda and stopped any Egyptian ad-
vance. In August 1948, he was promoted to lieutenant
colonel and appointed commander of the Etzioni Bri-
gade, Israeli troops fighting for Jerusalem. He was one
of the key leaders in helping to push for a cease-fire in
July 1949. Because of this, he was one of the Israelis who
participated in talks in Rhodes to end the war between
Israel and Jordan.
In October 1949, Dayan was promoted to the rank
of major general and placed in command of the Israeli
Southern Command, located in Beersheba. He oversaw
the period of retraining of the infant Israeli army into
the modern Israeli Defense Force (IDF), also known as
Zahal, making it one of the finest military forces in the
world despite its small size. Dayan saw that despite a
cease-fire with the Arab states surrounding Israel, they
were continuing a military buildup supporting Palestin-
ian terrorists. He felt that Israeli policy should be imme-
diate retaliation for any terrorist attacks, and he directed
several operations in what is now the Gaza Strip.
Dayan served as the commander in chief of the
Israeli army from December 1953 until January 1958.
On 29 October 1956, he led Israeli forces in the inva-
sion of the Sinai Peninsula, destroying Egyptian military
forces there. Historians Martin Windrow and Francis K.
Mason write: “The Sinai Campaign of October–Novem-
ber 1956, which coincided with the Anglo-French inva-
sion of the Suez Canal Zone, was a complete vindication
of Dayan’s philosophy that the whole of Zahal should
be able to operate at the level of commando units of
other nations. Speed, surprise, and determination were
the keynotes, together with a through understanding of
the enemy. Dayan took risks which would have been un-
forgivable against a European enemy, but which paid off
handsomely in practice.”
In 1958, Dayan retired from the Israeli army, and
the following year he was elected to the Israeli Knesset
(Parliament) as a member of the Mapai Party. In the cab-
inet of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, he took the
position of minister of agriculture, serving from 1959
to 1963 and from 1963 to 1964 in the same position
in Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s cabinet; however, he re-
signed following a disagreement with Eshkol over policy.
Dayan then joined the retired Ben-Gurion to form the
Rafi Party, also known as the Alliance of Israel’s Workers
Party. In 1965, he was elected again to the Knesset as a DAyAn, moShe