Warrior Statesman: The Life of Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan was one of Israel's greatest millitary heroes and political leaders. He commanded the Israeli forces that won the Suez War of 1956, and directed the Israeli victory in the Six Day War forced on Israel by Arab nations in 1967. Dayan served as the Israel Army Chief of Staff from 1953 to 1958, Minister of Agriculture from 1959 to 1964, and Minister of Defence from 1967 to 1974. He was blamed, and reviled, by many Israelis for Israel's disastrous lack of preparation before being attacked by Arab armies in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He served as Foreign Minister for the Likud-led government from 1977-1979, and was a key negotiator of the Camp David peace accords with Egypt in 1978. In 1939 the British who ruled Palestine imprisoned Dayan for his work with the Haganah, the Jewish liberation movement. He was released in 1941 to fight with the British against the Vichy French in Syria, where he was wounded in a battle and lost his left eye. This book by Slater refers to Dayan's boyhood and the plight of the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine which was threatened by the Vichy French and the Germans in Egypt, and the details of Dayan's imprisonment by the British, his role in World War II, and Israel's 1948 War of Independence, as well as Dayan's role as a negotiator with the UN and the Arabs after the war, including his trip disguised as an Arab to Amman to meet King Abdullah. Anecdotes include the comment by an English boy who saw Dayan at Ezer Weizmann's residence: "Look at him. The real Captain Cook." Covered are his heroic roles in Israel's numerous wars of defence, as well as his love affairs and dismal failure as a father and husband. Dayan was likened to General Wavell, the commander of British Army forces in the Middle East during World War II; Lawrence of Arabia; Admiral Horatio Nelson; and Biblical heroes Joshuah, Gideon, Jonathan and King David. Where Slater is off the rails here is his insistence that Israeli control over Judea, Samaria and Gaza constituted 'occupation' and 'oppression'. Israel seized these territories in a war forced upon her, and needed these territories to survive. Furthermore according to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and the 1922 League of Nations Mandate, these belonged to the Jewish State. They were the ancient heartland of the Jewish homeland for millenia. Slater's left leanings colour the biography and while he does relate how Dayan ordered Israeli flags pulled down from liberated territories in the Six Day War, he does not relate how Dayan actually handed the keys over to the Moslem Waqf, hours after capturing the Temple Mount, thus setting the stage for the Arab control over that landmark.