| Subscribe! | Judaica Gifts |
| RSS | Advertise with Us | Blogs | Judaica Gifts |
| 
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Debunking a myth: Dayan never feared Israel’s destruction in ’73 Statements made in the heat of battle sometimes become national lore. Former defense minister Moshe Dayan was said to have ’lost his nerve’ during the early stages of the Yom Kippur War, 28 years ago. He was widely quoted as saying the existence of the state was at stake. On the first night of the war, Dayan learned that the air force was being decimated on both fronts. According to Chaim Herzog’s The War of Atonement, the defense minister ’realized that a battle critical to the very existence of Israel was being waged.’ He called for Maj.-Gen. Benny Peled, commander of the air force, and told him that the situation on the Golan Heights was grave and that every plane had to be diverted to the northern front — whatever the cost. ’The fate of the Third Commonwealth [the reestablished nation of Israel] is at stake,’ numerous history books quote Dayan as saying. He was also said to have told prime minister Golda Meir that the ’Third Temple’ was falling — a reference to the two previous occasions when the Temple was destroyed by Babylonian and Roman conquerors, bringing to an end the two previous Jewish commonwealths. But numerous interviews with those surrounding Dayan during that fateful October say Dayan was misquoted and had never said that the state was under existential threat. Naphtali Lavie, then spokesman for the defense minister and who was with him at nearly every moment during the war, recalls it differently. Lavie said that Peled was lamenting that he was losing planes and pilots. Then Peled received a note that his son, a pilot, had been shot down over the Sinai. He was a young pilot and the mood was gloomy. Together in the room were also chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. David Elazar and his deputy, Maj.-Gen. Yisrael Tal. ’We started walking down the hallway toward a meeting with newspaper editors. A few of the editors mingled outside the entrance of the briefing room. As they were coming down the hall, Dayan put his hand on Benny’s shoulder and told him, ’Benny, your son will be all right. And you should know, on your shoulders rests the fate of the Third Commonwealth,’ ’ Lavie said in an interview this week. His version was also verified by Haim Yisraeli, today deputy director-general of the Defense Ministry. During the 1973 war Yisraeli was Dayan’s aide and with him throughout the period. Lavie said the editors must have misunderstood or misheard what Dayan was saying, thus the legendary quote was born. At the initial briefing, both Lavie and Yisraeli recalled that word had come that Peled’s son had been rescued. ’Suddenly a message arrived that [Peled’s] son, a pilot, was shot down behind enemy lines. Hana Zemer, the editor of Davar, burst out in hysterical tears. Later word arrived that he was safe,’ Yisraeli said. Zemer verified the story, but said that she cried because of the way Peled handled the situation. She told this reporter in a 1998 interview that Peled simply took the message saying his son had been shot down and put it in his pocket, hardly pausing in his briefing. When the second message came she leaned over and asked Dayan what it said. ’He told me it said that his son had been rescued,’ she said. ’It was the most personal of moments. You see a man who finds out his son was missing and he doesn’t expose any of his feelings. That’s how serious the situation was.’ That meeting, along with statements about the destruction of the Third Commonwealth, was crucial in creating the account that Dayan had lost his nerve in the war. ’Many people lose their nerves but keep their cool,’ said Zemer. ’Dayan was very open. Whatever he thought, he communicated to us and I saw him several times in despair and very nervous. When he felt pessimistic he shared it with us.’ Historians recount that Dayan’s nerve broke. Dayan would hold daily briefings with the editors of Israeli newspapers and at one meeting on Tuesday, October 9, the fourth day of the war, Dayan appeared so pessimistic that some of the editors later urged Meir to bar him from appearing on television. ’He was very serious. But he wasn’t in despair. Certainly not despair,’ Yisraeli said of Dayan in an interview appearing in Tzevet, the IDF magazine for retired servicemen. Lavie confirmed this. ’Dayan was very realistic and told everyone that Israel was facing a very, very severe crisis on both fronts. He said the IDF had plans to contain them, and would counterattack. But now they needed to straighten the lines,’ Lavie said. Dayan told the editors he planned to go on television and ’tell the truth about the fall of the Bar-Lev Line.’ Lavie recalled that Gershom Shocken, the editor of Ha’aretz, told Dayan that if he told the public what he had just told them there would be an ’earthquake in the nation’s consciousness.’ Dayan replied he didn’t think so, but in any case it would take some time and Israel would have to pay a price. Zemer said she didn’t try to dissuade Dayan to appear in public, because his effect on the public was ’none of my business’ as a journalist. ’But there were other editors who also saw themselves as responsible for public sensitivities and urged him not to appear. One of them, then Ma’ariv editor Arye Dissentchik, telephoned Meir and urged her not to allow Dayan to appear in public,’ Zemer said. That night, Maj.-Gen. Aharon Yariv, the former chief of intelligence who was acting as assistant to the chief of General Staff, appeared at the press conference instead of Dayan. Lavie insisted that this was only because Dayan was called suddenly to urgent consultations at IDF headquarters in the Sinai at Um Hashiba and not because Meir had requested him not to appear on television that night. In his interview, Yisraeli said that in the last week of the war he received information that the Liberal faction of the Gahal Party was demanding that Dayan resign. ’I told this to Moshe and he asked me to arrange an immediate meeting with Golda,’ Yisraeli said. ’He told her that he was submitting his resignation…. He thought that if the public demanded that he be held accountable then he was prepared to do so immediately. ’This man was on the front every day and was constantly endangering his life. After his helicopter came under fire I asked him to stop running about battlegrounds. He just looked at me with his one eye and told me in that bastardly way: ’No bullet will ever touch me.’ ’ Some have speculated that Dayan had a death wish. One reservists who served as a radioman in one of the main armored divisions there said Dayan would repeatedly announce his location on the radio, which was known to be listened to by the Egyptians. ’Yes, it’s true that Dayan had no fear on the battlefield. Whenever I mentioned to him to be careful he would tell me that every cartridge had its address and not to worry about it,’ Lavie said. But Lavie said he never felt Dayan lost his nerve. ’I didn’t see that. However, on October 8 in the afternoon, we heard that the counterattack by [Maj.-Gen. Avraham] ’Bren’ Adan had failed. It was a desperate situation and we were also being beaten on the Golan Heights,’ Lavie said. ’It was a critical moment and I was in the room with Yisraeli and Dayan. Dayan then said ’I hope this [new] plan will work, otherwise we will have to use some very painful methods,’ Lavie said, but didn’t elaborate on what Dayan may have been alluding to. Lavie also said that on October 7, Dayan walked with Elazar toward Meir’s office. ’I was behind him and I heard Dayan tell Dado that he wanted him to reinstate Maj.-Gen. Arik Sharon as OC Southern Command to relieve Maj.-Gen. Shmuel Gorodish [Gonen], who had replaced him just three months before. ’[Sharon] knows the area. He commanded it and it is very important to put him back,’ ’ Lavie quoted Dayan as saying. He said that Dado told Dayan that Gorodish was ’a little shocked’ but would recover. At the meeting with Meir it was decided to send former chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Haim Bar-Lev down as a compromise overall commander. Yisraeli also said that Lt.-Gen. (res.) Yigal Yadin, a member of the Agranat inquiry of the war, said that Dayan’s nerves had never broken. ’Dayan never broke down,’ Yisraeli quoted Yadin as telling him. ’He stood with both feet on the ground. I was more pessimistic than he. But I had one complaint about him: a leader needs to exude hope and project it to the public. This he did not do.’
|
|
|
|
|
 |
