My Father, His Daughter

by Yaël Dayan

  During these months, Israel’s security was a daily news item, and the Dayan name was again a door opener. What happened with me once inside had to do with something I had or hadn’t, could or couldn’t deliver. When in Paris, I met—connections again—a top Ministry of Defense official. The delicious lunch at Lapérouse I owed to my father’s name. The flowers, phone calls, two more meetings, and what came very close to a marriage proposal were my own. I went out a few times with an Israeli journalist living in Paris then, who emphasized time and time again that he liked me despite my father. This, too, went into the Dayan list. My ego was well pampered, but I wasn’t sure what to pin my “success” on. It wasn’t sex, since few if any of these enthusiastic beginnings ended in bed. I should add, not because of morals, but due to a fear of pregnancy, and to inconvenience and my basic feeling that sex without deep emotion was overrated and a “complication.” The only creed I seemed to have was the preservation of my total freedom and independence, and sex seemed a threat or hindrance to it. I wasn’t irresistible in any way that could justify the courtings, the flowers, gifts, and confessions of love. I wasn’t a femme fatale giving a little and taking it all back, or mysterious or even great fun. True, I wasn’t an ordinary seventeen-year-old, but not a provocative Lolita either, and the only qualities that were fully there were a quickness of mind, a certain eloquence, being a good listener and an undemanding friend, and a freshness which must have been a bit different from the blasé, provocative, demanding ways of a typical European young lady. I lived and experienced and expressed myself, but I played no games, and this may have been appealing to some.

  In all my travels, I cannot list anything as more exciting than my arrival in Manhattan. All the way from Nahalal, I thought in awe. Europe was a search, superficial as it was, into a past civilization. Not as far back as my father’s archaeology, but a distance back in time that I could still relate to in a cerebral rather than mystical way. New York was a trip into the future. If this city existed, everything was possible and reachable. Free of gods and confining traditions, almost abstract in its lack of roots, it could reach to the skies, lifted to unimaginable heights by human talent and aspirations only.

  I felt at home immediately. No one, or everyone, was a stranger in New York. Anonymity was offered not by the condescension of others but as a result of total acceptance of a lack of uniformity. The multitude of colors, styles, languages, customs offered a hilarious sense of liberty. The freedom to be different. Whether to belong or remain alone was my choice. Neither the solitude nor the involvement was imposed by those hurrying but friendly millions, their attitudes or norms.

  I moved into a one-room apartment kindly offered me by someone I had met in Rome. His sister gave me the key and showed me how to operate the electric appliances, after reading a short letter of introduction. “You need some rest from the war over there where you live,” she said, and asked no more questions. The apartment was on the East Side, the upper Forties, and I walked to the consulate for mail. It takes about five minutes to adjust to directions in Manhattan, and after Rome and Paris, where finding an address was an ordeal, I felt grateful for the American ingenuity of oversimplification. The assumption that, to be simplified, the system had to cater to the lowest common denominator of perception rather pleased me. Everything felt like a child’s game. Instructions were spelled out to the full, and if that made me feel like an idiot, I soon realized that there were different layers, great depth of mind and heights of sophistication. Brain energy did not have to be wasted on filling out a form or finding an address. I found some mail at the consulate, and left my address, looked at week-old newspapers from home, and walked back to the apartment with a heavy shopping bag full of American foods, none of which I found to my liking.

  A long letter from home was a family affair. My mother missed me, was longing for mail, and added the addresses of two more people to call. My brothers wrote a few funny sentences, and my father wrote as if he were talking. “It’s been ages since you left, and so much happens every day. I miss you, but an American visit is quite something, so make the best of it. Try and read the N.Y. Times, as they report about the Middle East fully and quite objectively. The retaliation raid, as a policy, has outlived its usefulness. The surprise element is gone, and we are thinking of other ways to maintain security. I won’t bore you with details, but I’ll let you know not when I want you home, which is yesterday, but when I think you should come …”

  I could sense the enormity of the distance, geographical mostly, between the continents, and felt discomfort at being so far away at times like this. The apartment was shabby, the city steaming hot and humid, and I was tired. Tired of being a collector of experiences, of cataloguing them and listing them without having time to digest or even take them in. I wrote a few articles for a paper at home, called a few people and saw some, and realized that my limited budget wouldn’t carry me much longer. The superficiality and repetition began to bore me, and I started to explore the Village and Harlem for variations. The rest was a series of codes, based on very few letters, presented in a small variety of combinations. A code for food, for dress, for behavior, for musicals, for intercourse, and for routine conversation. I mastered the code and felt I had deciphered the simple pattern; the rest, the beyond and above, would take time and money I didn’t have. Of the many people I met, I liked one. A woman and, not surprisingly, of European background. Pauline Trigàre was, is, a fashion designer of the highest stature, an artist and a fascinating person. She was, for me, the epitome of the American dream. A Jewish immigrant who started from scratch and made it because of pure talent, resolution, and a fighting spirit. Her home combined the best of European taste with the utmost in American comfort. She held both my parents in admiration, had two sons, which immediately made it complicated for me, and lived with a man I found unpleasant at the beginning, until I grew accustomed to his Latin American–Jewish characteristics. This was the “other New York.” Chic restaurants and fancy gatherings, best-dressed women and elegant men, and the incredible power of money. This world, too, had its code, easy to learn but impossible to follow without the dollars, which resulted in frustration. Ordinary New York life bored me; the higher-circle style I couldn’t afford, and the artistic world of the Village was a second-class version of the Saint-Germain and Montparnasse with which I was familiar. The role of Jews in all these circles was almost dominant, and again the name Dayan was a convenient door opener, though, unlike in Europe, doors were swung widely open, and so were arms. One of the doors that opened was the Israel bonds offices, and I was asked to address a meeting in Miami on their behalf. This was a first in a series of hundreds of fund-raising meetings which I have addressed in the United States during the twenty-seven years following.

  When I think of this first speech, which was an immense success, I cringe with shame. There I stood, facing a group of Bermuda-shorts-clad, cigar-smoking, elderly men, and I “gave it to them.” It wasn’t only chutzpah, it was disgraceful. All the obvious banalities, I delivered in a fast, domineering tone. I did a Dayan on them, without having earned the right to do so, and they loved it. The flag I was waving was soaked in the sweat of pioneers and drenched in the blood of heroes. The sights I evoked, of poverty and austerity, of new immigrants in huts, surrounded by lice-ridden, trachoma-suffering multitudes of children, were true to an extent, but I was appealing for charity instead of for serious support. I offered the negative present instead of an optimistic, positive future, and my satiated, comfortable audience loved it all. “Isn’t she something!” they exclaimed. “Only seventeen,” they sighed, and the obvious “apple and the tree” remarks. To disguise my discomfort, I behaved arrogantly, almost unkindly, to my hosts, but my reputation as a speech-maker was established, and I was asked by the U.J.A. to address more meetings, which I handled in a similar way, refining my approach but not my off-stage behavior. What underlay this behavior was obvious. I hated being on the receiving end. I didn’t feel like a charity
case, and begging was not my style. I felt somehow degraded, and kicked. (When I returned, after two years’ Army service, I corrected all my previous mistakes, and turned into a good, honest speaker, inspiring, informing, and moving.) While I was speaking for the U.J.A., my expenses were paid, and I even toyed with the idea of doing a university year in New York. A two-phrase cablegram put an end to any plans I might have had. It was signed by my father and simply suggested I take the first plane home.

  Which I did, arriving in a blacked-out airport on October 29, the first day of the Sinai Campaign. Mother met me at the airport, briefed me on what was happening, and there was no question in my mind that I should join the Army as a volunteer, though my conscription was not due for another six months. When I saw my father, we were both in uniform.

  The Sinai Campaign showed my father at his military and political best. In a series of secret meetings with the French and the British in France, his campaign plans were accepted. A French military delegation found the Israeli Army better trained, equipped, and organized than they expected, and Ben-Gurion’s reluctance to join forces with France and Britain was slowly easing too. It was up to the old man to make the final decision, and take into account the possibility that the French—and more so, the British—might fail to deliver. For France and Britain, failure would mean a loss of prestige and perhaps a few casualties. What Israel was risking was her very existence, in case of defeat. According to the Dayan plan, our paratroopers were to be dropped close to the Suez Canal on D-Day, after dusk. On the first day, the battle, we hoped, would be localized, and the Egyptians would not deploy their Air Force to raid Israeli cities, which was Ben-Gurion’s major fear and the cause of his hesitation. On the first two days, Israel would be fighting alone, and the French and British assault would follow, bombing Egypt’s airfields and taking control of the canal zone. Israeli forces were to reach and capture the Straits of Tiran and lift the sea blockade. The objectives were clear: to neutralize the armed Egyptian threat, end terrorist infiltration from the Gaza Strip, and break the Egyptian blockade, activating Eilat as a major port.

  Father’s idea to start the battle from its final objective by dropping a paratroop battalion in the midst of Egyptian formations, far from Israeli lines, was the kind of seemingly risky proposal typical of his thinking. He knew his units, he knew Sharon and the other commanders, and he wasn’t wrong in his estimate of the enemy. What may have seemed momentary brilliance and a stroke of luck was an operational plan, worked out to the last detail, taking all odds into consideration and counting on the intangible quality of the Israeli soldier. For my father, the expanse of this intangible was as clear a fact to rely on as the number of tanks or the range of fighter-bombers.

  My platoon commander woke me up almost hysterical on my second night in training camp. “The Chief of Staff—that is, your father—he is here! He wants to see you.” I reacted in the silliest of fashions. I put on my uniform, my beret too, and as we were told not to part from our personal gun, took my rifle along from under my mattress. It was as if I were reporting to the Chief of Staff, which he of course was, not to my father, whom I hadn’t seen in three months. He was too happy to see me to notice how funny I looked. We kissed and kissed again, and he was obviously delighted to find me just where I was, a soldier in his winning army. He stayed only a few moments. He talked about the campaign, promising me a trip to the Sinai on my first leave, and when he parted, saying, “Be a good soldier,” he sounded very much like an ordinary father telling his daughter to “be a good girl.”

  It took the Egyptians a long while to realize that the paratroop drop and the crossing of the border by relatively small units meant war. The appearance of the first faultless fast moves as another act of reprisal was effective, and the slow enemy reaction afforded our forces freedom of movement for two days. My father himself drove around the battlefield in a two-jeep formation. He was present at all important events, on all fronts, and didn’t think anything of changing directives on the spot and giving new orders to anybody, regardless of rank. What he had invested in training, concept, and planning was his to reap now. The Army was fit, eager, and ready. Morale was high, the officers in the lead, and the new equipment well integrated. When discipline was breached, it was as a result of enthusiasm. As Father defined it: “Better to be engaged in restraining the wild horse than in prodding the reluctant mule.” Conventional General Staff officers thought he should make more frequent appearances in GHQ, but he simply ignored them. His jeep was shelled and almost hit; so was the Piper plane he used; but being shot at never deterred him from going where he thought he should be. “Dayan behaves like the battalion commander he was in the War of Independence,” critics said, but this was not the case. The Army was employing tanks as a mobile assault force for the first time. The French and British involvement was a first, and the mileage covered, as well as the size of the Israeli force, left no room for comparisons with any previous wars. My father did not spontaneously roam the Sinai in a jeep, for the sense of freedom or in order to show off. He was studying these new elements, developing new tactical concepts, and making essential decisions. New textbooks had to be devised and conceived by an eyewitness, not based on dispatches while sitting in the HQ office.

  The Gaza Strip presented another “first” challenge, which had to be handled with speed and wisdom. The occupation of a populated area meant some form of military rule. Father met with the notables of the Strip and granted them permission to resume all normal activities—fishing, agriculture, and business. The local municipal departments, and UN agency officials, were to resume their normal routine. Eventual good-neighborly relations dictated a policy of non-interference in Arabs’ lives, as long as they did not endanger Israeli security.

  On November 5, 1956, Sharm el-Shiekh was captured, and my father informed Ben-Gurion that the campaign was over. Ben-Gurion, perhaps jokingly, replied: “And I suppose you can’t bear that, can you?” Father, naturally, didn’t answer. When I saw him next, he was very happy indeed that the fighting was over. As proud as he was of the Army and its demonstration of top capacity, he was never trigger-happy, and never found exuberance in the exercise of waging war. Indeed, his efforts to perfect the war machine had the sole purpose of winning objectives with the minimal level of casualties and damage. Not for love of war, but as long as peace was not feasible.

  When we next met, I was still in the recruit training base. The war was over, and he talked little about it. He described the Sinai as if he were a tourist guide. The inspiring beauty of the mountains, the changing colors at sunset, and the palm trees on the Mediterranean shore. He took out of his pocket a flintstone arrowhead and gave it to me for luck, and told me about the archaeological treasures in a site near Gaza where he had just been. He wasn’t too interested in my own experiences as a recruit and a soldier, acting as if this for me was just another change of schools. I’d lived with the ingredients of Army life all along, and he expected me to feel comfortable and at home in the barracks.

  It wasn’t quite so simple. Becoming a soldier was not traumatic for me, but it took some adjustment. Military life was home ground, but so was individualism. I felt different—I probably was slightly different—and the regimentation was not to my liking. Nor the hierarchy of discipline and obedience. I didn’t mind the uniform, the gun, the narrow bed in the barracks, the lousy, fattening food, or the drill. I liked getting up at dawn and rather enjoyed the physical exercise. I loved night watch and was not bothered by the cold and the rain and the mud that caused such discomfort. The platoon commander was a charming girl who was satisfied as long as I saluted properly, kept my hair tied in a bun and my gun clean. The company commander was strict with all of us but had a sense of humor and a boyfriend who kept her happy and satisfied most of the time. But the women who held the top ranks in the camp, a major and a lieutenant colonel, were frustrated bitches as far as I was concerned, and for a long while I felt, probably unfairly, that the only thing they had in mind w
as the taming of Yaël Dayan. The major summoned me often to her office, on small, insignificant pretexts, for inevitable dreary lectures. “You understand that all women soldiers are equal. We expect not to run into any trouble with you. We notice already uncalled-for familiarity in your behavior to your superiors. I say familiarity; I really mean an aloof manner, as if we owed you something because of your father.” “So I want you to know, and don’t say you haven’t been warned, that there will be no privileges on this base. I am very unhappy about your father’s private visits here, and I hope this will not recur. I accepted it because of the war and the fact that you arrived from abroad, but …”

  I played the naïve innocent: “Did I do something wrong?”—which angered her more. “It’s an attitude, I can see it in your eyes. Stuck-upness, whereas you ought to set an example to others …” She carried on like this several times, and the more I was lectured to, the more disassociated I felt and acted. Once again, I was an observer. I obeyed orders to perfection, my gun was the shiniest, my personal things tidy, and there was no reason to reproach me on any of the required routines. I made no friends, as it was the first time I was surrounded by girls my own age, all fresh from the hothouses of home and missing their mothers and boyfriends, and I felt I had very little in common with them. I drew a circle around myself and was simply deaf and blind to what went on outside it. Inside, I compensated myself for whatever I thought I was deprived of. I wrote and received many letters, I read books of poetry and philosophy to distinguish myself from the others, who read romantic paperback novels and journals. Under the heavy Army socks, I wore pretty white ones, and I used the best soap and eau de cologne, rather than Army issue. I did help the other girls in many practical ways, but I didn’t share their world and I kept to myself. My mother came to visit, and we were both humiliated, as she was not allowed in, and we kissed and talked separated by a barbed-wire fence, which must have reminded her of the Acre prison.