64 Facts About Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician.

Moshe Dayan served in the Special Night Squads under Orde Wingate during the Arab revolt in Palestine and later lost an eye in a raid on Vichy forces in Lebanon during World War II.

Moshe Dayan was close to David Ben-Gurion and joined him in leaving the Mapai party and setting up the Rafi party in 1965 with Shimon Peres.

Moshe Dayan became Defence Minister just before the 1967 Six-Day War.

In 1977, following the election of Menachem Begin as Prime Minister, Moshe Dayan was expelled from the Labor Party because he joined the Likud-led government as Foreign Minister, playing an important part in negotiating the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Moshe Dayan was born on 20 May 1915 in Kibbutz Degania Alef, near the Sea of Galilee in Palestine, in what was then Ottoman Syria within the Ottoman Empire, one of three children born to Shmuel and Devorah Dayan, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Zhashkiv.

Moshe Dayan was the second child born at Degania, after Gideon Baratz.

Moshe Dayan was named Moshe after Moshe Barsky, the first member of Degania to be killed in an Arab attack, who died getting medication for Dayan's father.

At the age of 14, Moshe Dayan joined the Jewish defence force Haganah.

Seven months later, Moshe Dayan was replaced as the prisoners' representative after it was discovered that moves were being made to get him an individual pardon.

Moshe Dayan was assigned to a small Australian-led reconnaissance task force, which included fellow Palmach members and Arab guides, formed in preparation for the Allied invasion of Syria and Lebanon and attached to the Australian 7th Division.

Letters from this time revealed that despite losing his left eye and suffering serious injuries to the area where the eye was located, Moshe Dayan still pleaded with Wilson to be reenlisted in combat.

Moshe Dayan underwent eye surgery in 1947 at a hospital in Paris, which proved to be unsuccessful.

In 1947, Moshe Dayan was appointed to the Haganah General Staff working on Arab affairs, in particular recruiting agents to gain information about irregular Arab forces in Palestine.

On 23 July 1948, on David Ben-Gurion's insistence over General Staff opposition, Moshe Dayan was appointed military commander of Jewish-controlled areas of Jerusalem.

On 20 October 1948, Moshe Dayan commanded the 800-strong Etzioni Brigade during the ill-fated Operation Yeqev, in which the objectives were to join the Harel Brigade in the capture of the mountain range overlooking Beit Jala.

In September 1949, despite being involved in these negotiations, Moshe Dayan recommended to Ben-Gurion that the army should be used to open the road to Jerusalem and gain access to the Western Wall and Mount Scopus.

Moshe Dayan was an advocate of a "harsh" policy along the border.

On 18 June 1950, Moshe Dayan explained his thinking to the Mapai faction in the Knesset:.

In 1950, Moshe Dayan ordered the Israeli army in 1950 to destroy the Shrine of Husayn's Head, more than a year after hostilities ended.

Moshe Dayan was a close friend of Amos Yarkoni, an Arab officer in the Israel Defense Forces, At the time, the Military Commander commented that "if Moshe Dayan could be the Ramatkal without an eye, we can have a Battalion Commander with a prosthetic hand".

In December 1952, Moshe Dayan was promoted to chief of the Operations Branch, the second most senior General Staff post.

On taking command, based on Ben-Gurion's three-year defence programme, Moshe Dayan carried out a major reorganisation of the Israeli army, which, among others, included:.

In May 1955, Moshe Dayan attended a meeting convened by Ben-Gurion.

Prime Minister Moshe Dayan Sharett, shocked by the officers' indifference to neighbouring Lebanon, turned down the plan as divorced from reality.

In July 1953, whilst on the General staff, Moshe Dayan was party to the setting up of Unit 101, which was to specialise in night-time cross-border retaliation raids.

Moshe Dayan was initially opposed to setting up such a group because he argued it would undermine his attempts to prepare the IDF for an offensive war.

Moshe Dayan merged Unit 101 with the Paratroopers Brigade and assigned its command to Sharon.

Moshe Dayan believed in the value of punitive cross-border retaliation raids:.

When seeking approval for operations, Moshe Dayan downplayed the scale of the raids to get approval.

Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan had told Sharett that their estimate of Egyptian casualties was 10.

Moshe Dayan, who believed in the inevitability of the "Second Round", argued for a preemptive attack on Israel's neighbours, particularly Egypt.

On 23 October 1955, Ben-Gurion instructed Moshe Dayan to prepare plans to capture Sharm al Sheikh.

Moshe Dayan's words became famous quickly and has served as one of the most influential speeches in Israeli history since.

In 1959, a year after he retired from the IDF, Moshe Dayan joined Mapai, the Israeli centre-left party, then led by David Ben-Gurion.

In 1965, Moshe Dayan joined with the group of Ben-Gurion loyalists who defected from Mapai to form Rafi.

Moshe Dayan was covering the Vietnam War to observe modern warfare up close after he left political life.

Moshe Dayan once said that he preferred Sharm-al-Sheikh without peace, to peace without Sharm-al-Sheikh.

Moshe Dayan modified these views later in his career and played an important role in the eventual peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

Moshe Dayan's contention was denied by Muky Tsur, a longtime leader of the United Kibbutz Movement who said "For sure there were discussions about going up the Golan Heights or not going up the Golan Heights, but the discussions were about security for the kibbutzim in Galilee," he said.

Moshe Dayan's remarks must be taken in context of the fact that he was a member of the opposition at the time.

Indeed, on June 8,1967, Moshe Dayan bypassed both the Prime Minister and the Chief of staff in ordering the Israeli army to attack and capture the Golan.

Many Liberty survivors and their supporters maintain that Moshe Dayan personally ordered the attack, and this is supported by a CIA report on the attack.

Moshe Dayan was still in that post when the Yom Kippur War began catastrophically for Israel on 6 October 1973.

Moshe Dayan assumed that Israel would be able to win easily even if the Arabs attacked and, more importantly, did not want Israel to appear as the aggressor, as it would have undoubtedly cost it the invaluable support of the United States.

Moshe Dayan suggested options at the beginning of the war, including a plan to withdraw to the Mitleh Mountains in Sinai and a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights to carry the battle over the Jordan, abandoning the core strategic principles of Israeli war doctrine, which says that war must be taken into enemy territory as soon as possible.

Moshe Dayan was expelled from the Alignment, and as a result, sat as an independent MK.

Moshe Dayan resigned his post in October 1979, because of a disagreement with Begin over whether the Palestinian territories were an internal Israeli matter.

In 1973, two years after the divorce, Moshe Dayan married Rachel Korem in a simple ceremony performed by Rabbi Mordechai Piron, IDF chief chaplain, at the Pirons' home.

Moshe Dayan humorously told well-wishers that he had no trouble getting a marriage license.

When he died, Moshe Dayan left almost his entire estate to his second wife, Rachel.

Moshe Dayan followed him into politics and has been a member of several Israeli left-wing parties over the years.

One of his sons, Assi Moshe Dayan, was an actor and a movie director.

Moshe Dayan lamented having recited Kaddish for his father "three times too often for a man who never observed half the Ten Commandments".

The Telem party won two seats in the 1981 elections, but Moshe Dayan died shortly thereafter, in Tel Aviv, from a massive heart attack.

Moshe Dayan had been in ill-health since 1980, after he was diagnosed with colon cancer late that year.

Moshe Dayan is buried in Nahalal in the moshav where he was raised.

Moshe Dayan was a complex character; his opinions were never strictly black and white.

Moshe Dayan had few close friends; his mental brilliance and charismatic manner were combined with cynicism and lack of restraint.

Moshe Dayan had courage amounting to insanity, as well as displays of a lack of responsibility.

Moshe Dayan later ordered the Israeli flag removed from the Dome of the Rock, and gave administrative control of the Temple Mount over to the Waqf, a Muslim council.

Moshe Dayan believed that the Temple Mount was more important to Judaism as a historical rather than holy site.

Moshe Dayan was an author and described himself as an amateur archaeologist, the latter hobby leading to significant controversy, as his amassing of historical artifacts, often with the help of his soldiers, seemed to be in breach of a number of laws.

The far-future Galactic Empire described in the book includes a planet called "Moshe Dayan", inhabited by Jews.