member of the Rafi Party, which eventually merged with
the Labor Party.
Dayan, however, was outside politics, and when
another Arab-Israeli war threatened in 1967, Eshkol
named him as minister of defense. Dayan had barely
taken office when, following a series of attacks by Syria
on northern Israel, he and Eshkol agreed that a full-
scale assault on several Arab nations—Syria, Jordan, and
Egypt—was necessary. This offensive began on 5 June
1967; the Arabs, taken completely by surprise, could not
muster any kind of defense, and within six days they
were suing for peace. Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War
was complete: The small nation captured the West Bank
and eastern Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights
from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Pen-
insula from Egypt. Under Dayan, Israel had risen to
become a respected recognized nation after one of the
most dramatic fast-moving campaigns the world had
ever seen.
In 1969, following Eshkol’s death, Golda Meir be-
came the first female prime minister of Israel, and she re-
tained Dayan as defense minister. He continued Israel’s
buildup of control over areas it had captured, but he did
not foresee a lightning attack from Egypt, which began
on 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur holiday. Egyptian
forces crossed the Suez Canal and took Israeli troops
completely by surprise; by 22 October, Israel and Egypt
had negotiated a cease-fire. Despite Dayan’s years of ser-
vice, the entire military disaster was blamed on him, and
there were calls for his resignation. A commission estab-
lished to investigate the failure placed the blame on sev-
eral field officers rather than Dayan, but his usefulness
to Meir was finished. He resigned his portfolio in June
1974, two months after she resigned as prime minister.
Although it appeared that his career in the mili-
tary and Israeli politics was over, Dayan remained a re-
spected figure. In 1977, Menachem Begin, a member
of the Likud Party, was elected prime minister, and he
named Dayan, a member of the opposition Labor Party,
as foreign minister. Despite the fact that he was a life-
long warrior who had spent much of his life fighting
Arab enemies of his homeland, he took the position with
an eye toward finding peace with these adversaries. Tak-
ing office, he began negotiations with his archenemies
the Egyptians and eventually reached a compromise in
which Egypt agreed to recognize Israeli control over the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip in exchange for the return
of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. In landmark talks that
eventually brought together Prime Minister Begin and
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat at Camp David under
the auspices of U.S. president Jimmy Carter, the agree-
ment was signed in September 1978. Dayan the warrior
had worked to bring peace to Israel.
In 1979, Dayan discovered he was suffering from
inoperable colon cancer. Resigning from government in
a disagreement with Begin, he spent his final months
writing his memoirs. He founded a new political party,
Telem, which advocated full sovereignty for the Pales-
tinians and Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. In 1980, he was elected to the Knesset as a
member of Telem (which later went out of existence).
Dayan died in Tel Aviv on 16 October 1981 at the age
of 66 and was buried with full military honors. He was
the author of four books, including Moshe Dayan: Story
of My Life (1976) and Breakthrough: A Personal Account
of the Egypt-Israel Peace Negotiations (1981).
Historian Michael Lee Lanning writes of Dayan’s
legacy: “The achievements of Dayan are extensive yet
simple: the state of Israel, despite wholesale enemies,
continues to exist. Dayan is remarkable not only for his
feats but also for his innate abilities to train and lead
men. His military education came not from academies
or service school but from the kibbutz and the battle-
field. Dayan’s professional skills in training his army and
his aggressiveness and flexibility on the battlefield made
the IDF one of the world’s most efficient, effective fight-
ing forces of all time.”References: Lau-Lavie, Naphtali, Moshe Dayan: A Biogra-
phy (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1968); Dayan, Moshe,
Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life (New York: Morrow, 1976);
Slater, Robert, Warrior Statesman: The Life of Moshe Dayan
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991); Windrow, Martin,
and Francis K. Mason. “Dayan, Moshe,” in The Word-
sworth Dictionary of Military Biography, (Hertfordshire,
U.K.: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 74–78; Lan-
ning, Michael Lee, “Moshe Dayan,” The Military 100: A
Ranking of the Most Influential Military Leaders of All Time
(New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1996), 255–258.Decatur, Stephen (1779–1820) American naval
officer
Born at Sinnepuxent, Maryland, on 5 January 1779,
Stephen Decatur was the son of a merchant ship cap-
tain and naval officer of French descent. He receivedDecAtuR, Stephen