and
Yigal Allon, Kibbutz
Hanita, 1938 ,
Hanita, March 1938 At the age of 14, Dayan joined the Jewish defence force
Haganah. Dayan joined the
Palmach, which was established as the Haganah's elite strike force, and was assigned to a small Australian-led reconnaissance task force, which also included fellow Palmach members and Arab guides, 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.
Eye injury On 7 June 1941, the night before the invasion of the
Syria–Lebanon campaign, two Palmach companies were sent in to perform a final reconnaisance of Vichy positions. Their tasks were to cut wires, ambush Vichy patrols guarding bridges, blow up culverts, sabotage roads, and guide Australian troops during the upcoming invasion. The two companies were led by Dayan and
Yigal Allon. At the time, Dayan served under the command of British Lieutenant General Sir
Henry Maitland Wilson. Dayan's unit secured two bridges over the
Litani River. When they were not relieved as expected, at 04:00 on 8 June, the unit perceived that it was exposed to possible attack and—on its own initiative—assaulted a nearby Vichy police station, capturing it. A few hours later, as Dayan was on the roof of the building using
binoculars to scan Vichy French positions on the other side of the river, the binoculars were struck by a French rifle bullet fired by a sniper from several hundred yards away, propelling metal and glass fragments into his left eye and causing severe damage. Six hours passed before he could be evacuated. Dayan lost the eye. In addition, the damage to the
extraocular muscles was such that Dayan could not be fitted with a
glass eye, and he was compelled to adopt the black
eye patch that became his trademark. Dayan wrote in his autobiography: "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 eyepatch. 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."
Haganah promotion and 89th Battalion In 1947, Dayan was appointed to the
Haganah General Staff working on Arab affairs, in particular recruiting agents to gain information about irregular Arab forces in Palestine. He served during the
1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine. Following the Israeli declaration of independence and the start of the
1948 Arab-Israeli War in May 1948 he continued in his position as a Haganah officer, and susbequently as an officer in the newly-formed
Israel Defense Forces. On 14 April 1948, Dayan's brother Zorik was killed in combat. On 22 April, Dayan was put in charge of abandoned Arab property in
Haifa following
its capture. To put a stop to the out-of-control looting, he ordered that anything that could be used by the army be stored in Haganah warehouses and the rest be distributed amongst Jewish agricultural settlements. On 18 May, Dayan was given command of the Jordan Valley sector. In a nine-hour battle, his troops stopped the Syrian
advance south of the
Sea of Galilee. In June, he became the first commander of the 89th Battalion, part of
Yitzhak Sadeh's
8th Armored Brigade. His methods of recruiting volunteers from other army units, such as the
Golani and
Kiryati Brigades, provoked complaints from their commanders. On 20 June 1948, two men from one of his companies were killed in a confrontation with
Irgun members trying to bring weapons ashore from the
Altalena at
Kfar Vitkin. During
Operation Danny, he led his battalion in a brief raid through
Lod in which nine of his men were killed. His battalion was then transferred to the south, where they captured
Karatiya, close to
Faluja on 15 July. His withdrawal of his troops after only two hours, leaving a company from the
Givati Brigade to face an Egyptian counterattack led to Givati Commander
Shimon Avidan demanding that Dayan be disciplined. Chief of the General Staff
Yigael Yadin instructed the military attorney general to proceed, but the case was dismissed.
Jerusalem and Moshe Dayan reach cease-fire agreement, Jerusalem, 30 November 1948 On 23 July 1948, on
David Ben-Gurion's insistence over General Staff opposition, Dayan was appointed military commander of Jewish-controlled areas of Jerusalem. In this post, he launched two military offensives. Both were night-time operations and both failed. On 17 August, he sent two companies to attempt to occupy the hillsides around
Government House, but they retreated suffering casualties. On the night of 20 October 1948, to coincide with the end of
Operation Yoav further south,
Operation Wine Press was launched. Its objective was to capture
Bethlehem via
Beit Jala. Six companies set out but were pinned down by machine-gun fire in the wadi below Beit Jala and were forced to withdraw. Following the 17 September 1948 assassination of Count
Folke Bernadotte, it was over 20 hours before he imposed a curfew over Jewish Jerusalem and began arresting members of
Lehi, the underground organisation believed to be responsible. One reason for this delay was the need to bring loyal troops from
Tel Aviv into the city. On 20 October 1948, Dayan commanded the 800-strong
Etzioni Brigade during the ill-fated
Operation Yeqev, in which the objectives were to join the
Harel Brigade in the capture of the mountain range overlooking
Beit Jala. The mission was called-off because of misguided navigation, and
Ben Gurion's fear of upsetting the Christian world at Israel's capture of Christian sites. A ceasefire went into effect on 22 October. In the autumn of 1948, he was involved in negotiations with
Abdullah el Tell, the Jordanian military commander of East Jerusalem, over a lasting cease-fire for the Jerusalem area. In 1949, he had at least five face-to-face meetings with
King Abdullah of Jordan over the Armistice Agreement and the search for a long-term peace agreement. Following a February 1949 incident, he was courtmartialed for disobeying an order from his superior, Major-General
Zvi Ayalon OC Central Command. A military court found him guilty and briefly demoted him from lieutenant colonel to major. This did not prevent him from attending the armistice negotiations on
Rhodes. On 29 June 1949, he was appointed head of all Israeli delegations to the
Mixed Armistice Commission meetings. In September 1949, despite being involved in these negotiations, Dayan recommended to Ben-Gurion that the army should be used to open the road to Jerusalem and gain access to the
Western Wall and
Mount Scopus.
Southern Command On 25 October 1949, he was promoted to major general and appointed commander of the Southern Command. Most of the staff officers resigned in protest of his replacement of
Yigal Allon. The major problem in the south of the country was Palestinians crossing the border, "infiltrating", from the Gaza Strip, Sinai, and the Hebron hills. Dayan was an advocate of a "harsh" policy along the border. In Jerusalem, he had given instructions that infiltrators killed in no-man's-land or the Arab side of the border should be moved to the Israeli side before UN inspections. Allon had already introduced a 7 kilometre "free-fire" zone along the southern borders. In the spring of 1950, Dayan authorized the
Israeli Air Force to
strafe shepherds and their herds in the
Beit Govrin area. There were also strafing attacks on
bedouin camps in the
Gaza area. In early 1950, 700 bedouin,
'Azame, were expelled from the South Hebron area. In September 1950, several thousand more were driven from the demilitarized zone at
Al-Ajua During 1950, the remaining population of
al-Majdal were transferred to the Gaza Strip In a notorious incident on 31 May 1950, the
army forced 120 Arabs across the Jordanian border at
'Arava. "Two or three dozen" died of thirst before reaching safety. During 1950, Dayan also developed a policy of punitive cross-border
reprisal raids in response to
fedayeen attacks on Israelis. IDF squads were sent into the Gaza Strip to lay mines. The first retaliation raid on a village occurred 20 March 1950 when six Arabs were killed at
Khirbet Jamrura. On 18 June 1950, Dayan explained his thinking to the
Mapai faction in the
Knesset: [Retaliation is] the only method that [has] proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plants mines on our side. If we try to search for that Arab, it has no value. But if we harass the nearby village... then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators]... and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is [at stake], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war... The method of collective punishment so far has proved effective... There are no other effective methods. In 1950, Moshe Dayan also ordered the Israeli army to destroy the
Shrine of Husayn's Head, more than a year after
hostilities ended. It is thought that the demolition was related to Dayan's efforts to expel the remaining Palestinian Arabs from the region. On 8 March 1951, 18 were killed at
Idna. On 20 October 1951, two Battalion 79 (7th Brigade) companies destroyed several houses and an ice factory in eastern Gaza City; dozens were killed and injured. On 6 January 1952, an armoured infantry company from the same battalion attacked a Bedouin camp,
Nabahim, near
Bureij refugee camp killing 15.
Glubb Pasha wrote that the objective of this new strategy seemed to "be merely to kill Arabs indiscriminately". Dayan saw it as an "eye for an eye". He was a close friend of
Amos Yarkoni, an Arab officer in the
Israel Defense Forces, At the time, the Military Commander commented that "
if Moshe Dayan could be the Ramatkal (Chief of the General Staff) without an eye, we can have a Battalion Commander with a prosthetic hand". At the end of 1951, Dayan attended a course at the British Army's Senior Officers' School in
Devizes, England. In May 1952, he was appointed operational commander of the Northern Command.
Chief of the General Staff Moshe Dayan inspecting the honor guard during a ceremony marking the end of officers course at
Bahad 1, January 1955 The year 1952 was a time of economic crisis for the new state. Faced with demands of a 20% cut in budget and the discharge of 6,000 IDF members,
Yigael Yadin resigned as Chief of the General Staff in November 1952, and was replaced by
Mordechai Maklef. In December 1952, Dayan was promoted to Chief of the Operations (G) Branch, the second most senior General Staff post. One of Dayan's actions in this post was to commence work on the canal diverting water from the River Jordan, September 1953. During 1953, Prime Minister and Defence Minister
David Ben-Gurion began to make preparations for his retirement. His choice for defence minister was
Pinhas Lavon, who became acting MoD in the autumn of 1953. Lavon and Maklef were unable to work together and Maklef resigned. Dayan was immediately appointed CoS on 7 December 1953. This appointment was Ben-Gurion's last act as prime minister before his replacement by acting Prime Minister
Moshe Sharett. On taking command, based on Ben-Gurion's three-year defence programme, Dayan carried out a major reorganisation of the Israeli army, which, among others, included: • Strengthened combat units at the expense of the administrative "tail". • Raising the Intelligence and Training Branches of the Israeli Army. • Surrendering the activities of stores and procurement to the civilian Defence Ministry. • Revamping the mobilisation scheme and ensuring earmarking for adequate equipment. • Starting a military academy for officers of the rank of major and above. • Emphasised strike forces (Air Force, Armour) and on training of commando battalions. • Developed
GADNA, a youth wing for military training. In May 1955, Dayan attended a meeting convened by Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion raised the issue of a possible invasion of Iraq into Syria, and how this could be used to bring about change in Lebanon. Dayan proposed that: All that is required is to find an officer, even a captain would do, to win his heart or buy him with money to get him to agree to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, occupy the necessary territory, and create a Christian regime that will ally itself with Israel. The territory from the Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel, and everything will fall into place. Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, shocked by the officers' indifference to neighbouring Lebanon, turned down the plan as divorced from reality.
Cross-border operations In July 1953, while on the General staff, Dayan was party to the setting up of
Unit 101, which was to specialise in night-time cross-border retaliation raids. He was initially opposed to setting up such a group because he argued it would undermine his attempts to prepare the IDF for an offensive war. Unit 101's first official operation was to attack, on 28 August 1953, the
Bureij Refugee Camp, during which they killed 20 refugees and suffered 2 wounded. By October 1953, Dayan was closely involved with 101. He was one of the main architects of the
Qibya massacre, on the night of 14/15 October 1953, in response to the killing of 3 Israeli civilians in the
Yehud attack on 12 October. The General Staff order stated "temporarily to conquer the village of Qibya – with the aim of blowing up houses and hitting the inhabitants". The Central Command Operation Instructions were more specific: "carry out destruction and maximum killings." One hundred and thirty IDF soldiers, of whom a third came from Unit 101, carried out the operation. They carried 70 kg of explosives, blew up 45 houses, and killed 69 people. The commander who led the attack,
Ariel Sharon later said that he had "thought the houses were empty". The international criticism over the killed civilians led to a change of tactics. It was the last large-scale IDF attack on civilian buildings. In the future, targets were to be the
Arab Legion, the Frontier Police, and the Egyptian or Syrian Armies. Dayan merged Unit 101 with the
Paratroopers Brigade and assigned its command to Sharon. Dayan had a difficult relationship with MoD Lavon. There were issues over spending priorities and over Lavon's dealings with senior IDF members behind Dayan's back. This ended with Lavon's resignation over who ordered the
sabotage operation in Egypt, which led to the trial of a number of Egyptian Jews, two of whom were executed. Dayan believed in the value of punitive cross-border retaliation raids: We cannot save each water pipe from explosion or each tree from being uprooted. We cannot prevent the murder of workers in orange groves or of families in their beds. But we
can put a very high price on their blood, a price so high that it will no longer be worthwhile for the Arabs, the Arab armies, for the Arab states to pay it. Prime Minister Sharett was an advocate of restraint and was not as confident in the attacks' effectiveness. When seeking approval for operations, Dayan downplayed the scale of the raids to get approval. There were fewer large-scale cross-border raids in 1954. Between December 1953 and September 1954, at least 48 Arabs were killed in over 18 cross-border raids. Fifteen of the dead were civilians: farmers, shepherds, and a doctor; two were women. With Ben-Gurion's return, this changed. On the night of 28 February 1955,
Operation Black Arrow (
Mivtza Hetz Shahor) was launched against an Egyptian Army camp south of Gaza City. The IDF force consisted of 120 paratroops and suffered 14 dead; 36 Egyptian soldiers were killed as well as two Palestinian civilians. Ben-Gurion and Dayan had told Sharett that their estimate of Egyptian casualties was 10. On 31 August 1955, despite Sharett's opposition, three paratroop companies attacked the British-built
Tegart fort in
Khan Yunis.
Operation Elkayam directives called for "killing as many enemy soldiers as possible". The police station and a number of other buildings were blown-up and 72 Egyptian and Palestinians were killed.
Armaments Between 1955 and 1956, Dayan and
Shimon Peres negotiated a series of large weapons contracts with France. On 10 November 1955, an agreement was signed for the delivery of 100
AMX-13 tanks and assorted anti-tank weapons. On 24 June 1956, an $80 million deal was agreed involving 72
Dassault Mystère IV jets, 120
AMX-13 tanks, 40
Sherman tanks and 18
105mm artillery. The Mystere were in addition to 53 already on order. At the end of September 1956, a further 100 Sherman tanks, 300 half-tracks, and 300 6x6 trucks were added. By the beginning of November 1956, the Israeli army had 380 tanks. The two leaders thought war with Egypt could be achieved by provoking an Egyptian response to retaliation raids, which could then be used to justify an all-out attack. On 23 October 1955, Ben-Gurion instructed Dayan to prepare plans to capture
Sharm al Sheikh. On the night of 27 October 1955, an IDF battalion attacked an Egyptian army post at
Kuntilla (
Operation Egged), killing 12 Egyptian soldiers. On 2 November,
al Sabha, close to the
DMZ, was attacked, in
Operation Volcano (''Mivtza Ha Ga'ash
), killing 81 Egyptian soldiers. On 11 December, hoping an attack on Syria would provoke an Egyptian response, Operation Olive Leaves/Sea of Galilee (Mivtza 'Alei Zayit/Kinneret'') was launched in which a number of Syrian positions on the eastern shore of the
Sea of Galilee were destroyed. Forty-eight Syrian soldiers were killed as well as six civilians. The Egyptians did not react. A Cabinet meeting on 15 December 1955 voted against further provocations and ruled that any retaliation attacks must have full Cabinet approval. The raids ceased for six months. There was one exception: On 5 April 1956, following two earlier incidents along the border with the Gaza Strip in which four Israeli soldiers were killed, the IDF shelled the centre of Gaza City with 120 mm mortars. Fifty-eight civilians were killed, including 10 children. 4 Egyptian soldiers were also killed. It is not clear whether Dayan had Ben-Gurion's approval to shell the city. Egypt responded by resuming fedayeen attacks across the border, killing 14 Israelis during the period 11–17 April. During September–October 1956, as plans began to mature for the
invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, Dayan ordered a series of large-scale cross-border raids. On the night of 25 September, following a number of incidents including the machine-gunning of large gathering at
Ramat Rachel in which four Israelis were killed, and the murder of a girl southwest of Jerusalem, the 890th Battalion attacked the
Husan police station and nearby
Arab Legion positions close to the armistice lines. Thirty-seven Legionnaires and National Guardsmen were killed as well as two civilians. Nine or ten paratroopers were killed, several in a road accident after the attack. Following the killing of two workers near
Even-Yehuda, Dayan ordered a similar attack,
Operation Samaria/
Mivtza Shomron, on the
Qalqilya police station. The attack took place on the night of 10 October 1956 and involved several thousand IDF soldiers. During the fighting, Jordanian troops surrounded a paratroop company. The Israeli survivors only escaped under close air-cover from four
IAF aircraft. The Israelis suffered 18 killed and 68 wounded; 70–90 Jordanians were killed. In the aftermath, paratroop officers severely criticized Dayan for alleged tactical mistakes. It was the last time the IDF launched a reprisal raid at night. As
Israel Defense Forces Chief of the General Staff, Moshe Dayan personally commanded the Israeli forces fighting in the Sinai during the 1956
Suez Crisis. It was during his tenure as Chief of the General Staff that Dayan delivered his
famous eulogy of Ro'i Rutenberg, a young Israeli resident of Kibbutz
Nahal Oz, killed by fedayeen who ambushed him in the kibbutz fields in 1956. Dayan's words became famous quickly and the euology has served as one of the most influential speeches in Israeli history since. In forceful terms, Dayan condemned the killing and said, : "Early yesterday morning Roi was murdered. The quiet of the spring morning dazzled him and he did not see those waiting in ambush for him, at the edge of the furrow. Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we declare their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate. It is not among the
Arabs in
Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Roi's blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate, and see, in all its brutality, the destiny of our generation? Have we forgotten that this group of young people dwelling at Nahal Oz is bearing the heavy gates of Gaza on its shoulders? Beyond the furrow of the border, a sea of hatred and desire for revenge is swelling, awaiting the day when serenity will dull our path, for the day when we will heed the ambassadors of malevolent hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our arms. Roi's blood is crying out to us and only to us from his torn body. Although we have sworn a thousandfold that our blood shall not flow in vain, yesterday again we were tempted, we listened, we believed. : We will make our reckoning with ourselves today; we are a generation that settles the land and without the steel helmet and the cannon's maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home. Let us not be deterred from seeing the loathing that is inflaming and filling the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live around us. Let us not avert our eyes lest our arms weaken. This is the fate of our generation. This is our life's choice – to be prepared and armed, strong and determined, lest the sword be stricken from our fist and our lives cut down. The young Roi who left Tel Aviv to build his home at the gates of Gaza to be a wall for us was blinded by the light in his heart and he did not see the flash of the sword. The yearning for peace deafened his ears and he did not hear the voice of murder waiting in ambush. The gates of Gaza weighed too heavily on his shoulders and overcame him." ==Political career==