Moshe Dayan

Biography

Moshe Dayan was born in 1915 at Degania Alef, the first child born there, and grew up in the moshav of Nahalal. He joined the Haganah at fourteen, served in Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads during the Arab revolt, and spent 1939-1941 in a British prison after his group was caught with illegal weapons. Released to join the Palmach, he lost his left eye in June 1941 on a reconnaissance raid into Vichy-held Lebanon.

In the 1948 war he commanded on the Jerusalem front, and he went on to lead Southern Command before becoming chief of the general staff in 1953. He shaped the policy of reprisal raids and commanded the Sinai campaign of 1956. His 1956 eulogy for Ro'i Rothberg, a kibbutz guard killed near Gaza, became one of the best-known speeches in Israeli history.

Leaving the army in 1958, he entered the Knesset for Mapai and was agriculture minister from 1959 to 1964, then followed Ben-Gurion into Rafi. Appointed defence minister on the eve of the 1967 war, he oversaw the capture of East Jerusalem and became a national hero. He was still defence minister when the 1973 war caught Israel unprepared, and he left office with Golda Meir's government in 1974.

In 1977 he became foreign minister in Menachem Begin's Likud government, which got him expelled from the Alignment, and he played a large part in the Camp David talks with Egypt. He resigned in 1979 over policy on the Palestinian territories, founded the Telem party in 1981 and died that October. His amateur archaeology, often helped by his soldiers, drew criticism for breaking antiquities laws.