by Yaël Dayan
Ultimately, and certainly not wholeheartedly, he joined Rafi, contributing to it little more than his name. Ben-Gurion’s isolation and the way he was treated by Labor “veterans” broke through his apathy, and without much enthusiasm, he placed himself seventh on the new list. The fact that I stayed home in Zahala did not seem to cheer him, and he managed to spoil my own political enthusiasm. He talked about Rafi and its members in the second or third person, never using “we,” and while we expected to get twenty seats in the Knesset and be an influential factor, his estimate was six or eight. Alas, his pessimistic estimate proved accurate. Rafi won eight seats, and these didn’t constitute an important enough factor to be considered in the negotiations to form a new government.
Father’s political personality was branded pragmatist, in contrast to “visionary,” and by many he was called a follower rather than a leader. I could easily debate the first assumption, since I knew his pragmatism was a tool with which to implement the visionary in him. He was a follower in the true sense as long as Ben-Gurion was his leader, and the proof that he wasn’t a leader was in his almost anti-political idea that if people wanted to be led by him, they would elect him for the post. Running on the Rafi list, and the results of the election, confirmed his view. What he had to offer, as superior as it was—and he never underestimated himself—the people didn’t choose to have.
From 1965 to May 1967, each of us found a variety of escapes. I worked, mostly in Greece, on my fourth novel, Death Had Two Sons, while, in the Knesset, Father became more and more the lone wolf, letting Peres carry the burden of party administration, and not getting involved with the attempt to renovate and change which Rafi promised the voters.
He was restless and impatient. His headaches grew in frequency and intensity, and he devoted more time to archaeology, some writing, and a variety of women, whose common denominator, other than Rahel I suppose, was youth and vulgarity. For a while, we both traveled like maniacs, and often found a moment of pleasure and respite in each other’s company in London, Paris, or New York. I was still footing the bills, which always delighted him, and we still made a good-looking couple. He felt he was at the end of his career and developed serious economic worries about “old age,” and with a mixture of pride and painful bitterness referred to himself as “Yaël Dayan’s father,” warning me that my status as the “general’s daughter” would soon be forgotten.
My restlessness was channeled in a variety of ways. There was no future for me with him, Michael tried to convince me, and I should not develop dependence. So I let other men enter the labyrinth of my heart, and for a while was satisfied with a turbulent, self-destructive, neurotic relationship with a young American writer. Passion was no substitute for love, as exciting as its manifestations were, and when away from Michael, even when proposed to, made love to, or seriously courted, I felt an emptiness. Udi was married and had his first child, and for the first time, at twenty-five, I thought seriously of marriage and motherhood. It had to happen in Israel, I felt, but I was not yet ready to settle down at home, or anywhere else.
I went to the Far East, to Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, lectured often, fund-raising for the U.J.A., and so did Father. For Diaspora Jews, he was still one of the greatest symbols of “proud and brave Israel,” and rather than identified with an impotent small party, his name was synonymous with Israel at large. “My name still holds for fund-raising and for booking a table in an overbooked restaurant,” he remarked dryly.
In the spring of 1966, he was invited to visit the Vietnam front and write a series of articles about it. In spite of criticism and objections, he gladly accepted, and soon found refuge in the Nam swamps and jungles. He joined patrols, ate C-rations, and wore fatigues. He was back in his element, befriending GIs and cross-examining generals who sought his advice. When a friend said to him, “I wouldn’t go if I were in your place,” he replied: “If I were in your place, I wouldn’t go either. But I’m going in my place, while you are staying here in yours.” I, for one, understood and respected his motives, and if there was in it a touch of escape from frustrations, that was easy to understand, and accept, too. Not for one moment did I worry about his safety and well-being. He was a veteran, and he promised me that, of all deaths, he didn’t intend to be shot in a war that wasn’t his.
Mother went to Vietnam, too, and spent a romantic, enchanting night with him in Saigon, which charged her batteries for many months. I visited in his footsteps, as a war correspondent, after he left Vietnam, and was proud to find that he had left his brilliant imprint on the minds and actions of the men he met there.
The early spring of 1967 found me back in Athens, polishing my new novel and awaiting Father’s visit on his way back from the United States. We stayed in Michael’s flat, as he was away, and in the morning he asked me to get a local newspaper and translate the headlines for him. I walked into an empty street to be stopped by officers in uniform and two tanks. They informed me of a curfew and sent me home, rather rudely. We soon learned of the colonels’ takeover, and as sad and upset as we both were at the implications, my father’s eye held an excited glint as he considered himself lucky to be where things were happening, even if it was a coincidence.
For a couple of days, he manifested a sense of being involved. We walked to the Israeli legation, and he sent cables home, assessing the political implications, and we visited Mikis Theodorakis and other friends of mine who were under house arrest. The Greek soldiers recognized him, but, out of sheer respect for “generals” at that moment, let us travel freely. The fact that he was totally on the liberal opposition side eluded them. When he left for Israel, we talked in the well-guarded airport about his future. He spoke with disdain about his “aging” without accomplishing much, about being doomed to witness rather than participate, and begged me to come home soon, which I promised to do. Neither of us suspected that we’d both be in uniform when we met next, that it would be so soon, and that he was on the eve of a great comeback, not only as a participant, but as a popularly chosen leader.
TEN : THE SIX-DAY WAR
On May 20, 1967, my father celebrated his fifty-second birthday. For a few days prior to what for him personally was just another insignificant birthday, a huge Egyptian force, comprising about eighty thousand soldiers and eight hundred tanks, was moving in the Sinai Peninsula toward the Israeli border.
On May 22, Nasser declared a blockade of the Straits of Tiran to all ships bound to or from Israel.
On May 23, I received a cable in Athens, summoning me home. My father was sure we were facing another war, and very soon, and he knew I would rather be home when that happened.
On May 25, my BEA flight landed in Lydda airport, where my mother met me and drove me to my reserve-unit HQ in Tel Aviv, where I reported. I was listed as a lieutenant in the Military Spokesman’s unit, and I made it clear that I didn’t intend to stay in the Tel Aviv area and brief foreign journalists. It was Friday, and I was told to report the next day. They’d see what they could do, the officers promised. “As long as it is in the south,” I pressed. “And where do you think everyone requests to be sent?” On the way home, we listened to Nasser’s bragging speech. “Egypt will destroy Israel,” he declared. He announced that the armies of Egypt and Syria were now one, and invited Jordan to join. He praised the Soviets, scorned the UN, and his voice held a new self-confidence rather than the familiar Middle East hysteria.
After my rather long absence, the house in Zahala seemed like a safe shore that no war could shatter. Both my brothers were mobilized, and my father was truly glad to see me. “Just in time,” he said. “The war may begin tomorrow with dawn, unless it is postponed again, which would not surprise me.” He must have been certain enough, though, for he took me out to a “festive” dinner and was quite relaxed during the four-course meal. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and was fascinated by the changing expressions on his face rather than by what he told me. He had been in uniform for a week now, “getting the feel of it” aga
in. Many reservists were mobilized, and the long, nervous wait was demoralizing. His face lit up, as if transformed chemically from inside, when he spoke of the troops, of the commanders he knew; his heartbeat was with them, and all the parental love, all the camaraderie this man could summon glittered in his one eye. When he spoke of the diplomatic efforts to attain American consent and guarantee for free passage in the Gulf of Suez, or the negotiations with the UN and with European heads of state, his face showed dismay, if not contempt. He mentioned Udi and Assi and Zorik’s son Uzi and Aviva’s son Jonathan with anxiety and pride. They were all good fighters, responsible, reliable, and he said: “I am happy about the fact that they are motivated by love of their country rather than by hate for the enemy.”
He was confident of our strength, of our morale, and in all his eagerness for the operation to begin, he did not sound trigger-happy, bent on destruction, or in search of some personal satisfaction. Some of the plans were not perfect, he suggested, but all war rooms and command “pits” were open to him, and his advice at least was heard. It didn’t bother him to have no official authority, as long as they let him—“they,” meaning Eshkol, who was Prime Minister as well as Minister of Defense—be in on it. And where he asked to be, which was naturally the Southern Command, with an armored brigade. “Make sure you’re sent south,” he advised me, as if I were a tourist talking to a travel agent. “The best, of course, is Sharon’s division, if you can get there!”
The end of May is blessed with warm days and cooler nights, and a reminder of orange blossom is still in the air. We parted, not knowing when and how we would meet again, but sensing a deep harmony. For both of us, for my father in a deep and vast national sense, and for me in a purely personal way, it was a comeback. I came home, and soon I knew it was for good. He was at his best, freed of the frustrations, melancholy, and bitterness of the past few years. His car was waiting, and he drove—it was almost midnight—to the Southern Command in Beersheba, and I drove home to Zahala, to spend one last night, for many days to come, in a comfortable bed.
Twenty-four hours later, there was no orange-blossom scent in the air. The evening breeze scattered the loess dust, powdering my face, my sandaled feet, my writing pad, and the ration biscuits I was eating. I was attached to Arik Sharon’s division HQ, “the best post,” as my father suggested, for however long the general mobilization lasted. I was to send daily reports to the correspondents’ pool, which were to be distributed for publication in Israel and abroad. The definition of my objectives didn’t matter. I was in the one and only place I cared to be. The Egyptian threat, less than a mile to the west of where our tents were pitched, was my only reality, and my pulse beat in an impatient unison with the men around me, officers, soldiers, reservists, and innocent, eager conscripts.
The steam that had been bottled up for the last few years had to surface, and an all-out war seemed inevitable. A series of incidents between Syria and Israel and between Jordan and Israel led to the flawed judgments of President Nasser, who believed this was the perfect time to strike and retrieve his supremacy in the Arab world. The Six-Day War, as it was later called, was the third major armed conflict Israel had had to engage in since its birth, and on the last days of May we did not need to analyze or look for a historical perspective. We almost took for granted the fact that we were not accepted as an equal nation by our neighbors, that we were doomed to fight wars for our survival at what seemed to be ten-year intervals. The cycle of hatred, rejection, accumulation of arms, buildup of confidence in their own strength, and internal needs of a military dictatorship offered a seemingly endlessly repeatable pattern, leaving us no options other than tactical ones. Defense, a preemptive attack, the capture of the populated northern Sinai and the Gaza Strip, or a sweeping move toward the canal, one front at a time or all-out war on three fronts, the bombing of civilian targets or the use of the Air Force as an auxiliary to armor and infantry. The preoccupation with these options and others was not limited to government and General Staff meetings. Women in the supermarket as well as farmers in border settlements, schoolchildren, and newspaper editorials, with a varying degree of expertise and anxiety, were hectically assembling the pieces of this political-military jigsaw puzzle. The questions were not “why,” as there the answer seemed to be “survival,” but were mostly “when” and “how.”
Near the Nabatean ruins of ancient Shivta, where Sharon’s HQ was camouflaged sloppily, we had all the answers. The “when” was yesterday—at the latest, today—and the “how” was mapped out in the war room tent in large red-and-blue arrows crossing the green border line into the Sinai all the way west. The “how” was also mapped in the experienced, wrinkled faces of reservists, in the shining eyes of tank crews, and in Arik Sharon’s diabolically brilliant military brain. Where the question marks were left open and gaping was the corridors of the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s office. It was evident that the political leadership was unable to commit itself to an irreversible course of action and was hesitant to derive the courage and determination to do so from the people and the Army, rather than, as normally expected of leadership, inspire them.
Ceaseless interparty contacts attempted to broaden the framework of Eshkol’s government to form a national unity government. Some of the parties, including Begin’s Herut, asked Eshkol to hand over the premiership to Ben-Gurion, but the real need was expressed in popular demonstrations, petitions, and tireless exhortations by a stream of individuals. “Dayan for Minister of Defense” was almost a unanimous request. As Shimon Peres was effectively negotiating the proposition, fully backed by Ben-Gurion, his task was made easier by an enormous surge of popular demand. A myth? A craving for what represented military glory and personal courage? Idealists, pragmatists, followers, and political adversaries who joined in a request to have my father named Defense Minister were mostly motivated by a crying need for decision-taking leadership. The emotional horses were pulling the hesitant political cart, and either to steer, speed, or stop it, it needed a superb coachman. The candidate himself, my father, did not cooperate. He would do, he declared, anything he was asked to do, provided it did not keep him from the active front. He was not going to be an “adviser” in a Jerusalem office; he’d rather command a tank battalion. He was not going to interfere with the existing IDF hierarchy or replace someone, thus discrediting him. He rather fancied a position as commander of the southern front, with the current GDC Southern Command as his deputy.
Meanwhile, Peres, Begin, the Religious Front leaders, and others calling on the government to entrust the defense portfolio to Dayan’s hands were against compromising. When Golda Meir suggested Allon for Defense, and it was clear that the Defense portfolio was to be separated from the premiership, the pressure mounted, and Allon himself withdrew his candidacy.
On May 30, King Hussein signed an Egyptian–Jordanian defense pact in Cairo, and on June 1 my father inspected the Jerusalem area. His trip was interrupted. At 7 p.m., Eshkol telephoned Father to report that the cabinet had approved the decision to give him the Defense portfolio. As my father said, the following morning: “It took the entry of eighty thousand Egyptian troops into the Sinai to get me back into the government.”
The precise series of events, the pressures, the intricate political scheming, are of little consequence now, or even then—once the decision was taken. What was evident then, and later, as before, was the fact that my father’s career would never benefit from his own ambition. He would never push or pull to get a position, or even cooperate with those who wished it with his consent and on his behalf. He was content to announce his availability, and his neutrality, meanwhile wasting no time, doing his homework, planning, and applying his mind and talent to what should be done rather than to who would do it. As a result, he did not feel in debt or make an emotional or ideological commitment to the people and movements which placed him where they did. He felt he derived his power, authority, and sense of mission directly from the people, and to them it
was owed. Eighty thousand Egyptians motivated three million Israelis to want him there, and the three million’s gain was the eighty thousand’s loss. There was no time to waste.
That same Thursday, June 1, I was busy brigade-hopping. The frustration was reaching a peak, and an afternoon sandstorm didn’t help. Cooks, drivers, privates, and colonels fought apathy and desperately tried to boost morale. Mordechai Zipori, an armored brigade commander, recited Jabotinsky’s patriotic verse. Arik Sharon restlessly went over the attack plans for the thousandth time—they were flawless, to begin with—and Kuti, the infantry commander, walked the desert plateau, where I joined him, looking for flintstone arrowheads. He piled them on the sand and sorted them out. The small or broken he said were common; he gave them to children. A few perfect ones he kept; but the best, the largest, and one extraordinarily shiny white one he asked me to bring to my father. “And one for you, to keep you safe,” he said, and I put it in my shirt pocket. The night before, Arik issued orders to move our half-tracks to the border. “I want them on the frontier, even if exposed. From border stone to border stone, on the last inch which is Israel.” I was watching with Kuti the dusty trails of the approaching vehicles. “An exercise in wishful thinking,” Kuti commented. “Lining up for a race does not mean the race will take place.” Colonel Kuti Adam looked like a fierce warrior. He was dressed in battle fatigues and a black beret, a pistol and a knife dangling from his belt; a canteen, binoculars, a large map on the hood of his jeep—all contrasting with the extraordinary softness of his voice, and the warm, nostalgic look in his black eyes. He talked of my father, whom he loved and admired, saying simply: “If he leads us, it isn’t that we’ll go to war, as we should; it is the way we are going to win it which is going to be different.” He talked at length, gazing west, as the half-tracks were pulling into a set formation. “Moshe,” he said, “is not a mystic mascot. It isn’t his military genius either, as he approved of the battle plans and made only a few changes. It is a quality which can’t be defined, which represents, and demands, the best in all of us. For me, he is a link between those arrowheads and the half-tracks, and forward in time to, alas, nuclear warheads. At the same time, if we ever have peace, it will be under his leadership, or in his spirit.” Kuti felt he talked too much, as he was a gentle, shy person, and to his relief, Colonel Dov Sion arrived to take me to the field hospital and back to Shivta. We had dinner with Arik, in his trailer, and I was too tired to wait for the midnight news, on which my father’s appointment was announced.