Old Soldier Who Won’t Fade

For a while in 1967, after the Israelis’ war had ended in six days while ours in Vietnam dragged on and on, there was a line going the rounds in this country on the order of: “Why don’t we hire Moshe Dayan? It shouldn’t take him more than six weeks to clean up the Vietcong.” For Dayan is one of a breed that is growing increasingly rare as the twentieth century grows older: the Establishment folk hero. Of course, like most of these men—think of our own MacArthur and Patton—Dayan was never entirely “Establishment,” although he has spent nearly all his adult life in the army or government; nor, as the storms that have broken around him during the last year remind us, is he everybody’s hero. He would not necessarily have done in Vietnam what those who made that crack had in mind. But he would unquestionably have shaken things up.

As it is, Moshe Dayan has had more than his share of ups and downs. As a young soldier who had developed an extremely effective though (or more probably because) unorthodox guerrilla training program, his career was almost aborted at its outset by the piece of shrapnel that tore up his left eye. But he recovered and, after a number of years in intelligence work, was back on the battlefield in the 1948 war, leading the top (and again unorthodox) commando battalion. Under Ben-Gurion’s premiership he acted, at one time or another, as commander of Jerusalem, chief negotiator with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Minister of Agriculture, and— before and during the 1956 war—Chief of Staff. And by 1956, the black eye-patch that he hated had become, paradoxically, a sort of symbol of Israeli resistance.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

For a while in 1967, after the Israelis’ war had ended in six days while ours in Vietnam dragged on and on, there was a line going the rounds in this country on the order of: “Why don’t we hire Moshe Dayan? It shouldn’t take him more than six weeks to clean up the Vietcong.” For Dayan is one of a breed that is growing increasingly rare as the twentieth century grows older: the Establishment folk hero. Of course, like most of these men—think of our own MacArthur and Patton—Dayan was never entirely “Establishment,” although he has spent nearly all his adult life in the army or government; nor, as the storms that have broken around him during the last year remind us, is he everybody’s hero. He would not necessarily have done in Vietnam what those who made that crack had in mind. But he would unquestionably have shaken things up.

As it is, Moshe Dayan has had more than his share of ups and downs. As a young soldier who had developed an extremely effective though (or more probably because) unorthodox guerrilla training program, his career was almost aborted at its outset by the piece of shrapnel that tore up his left eye. But he recovered and, after a number of years in intelligence work, was back on the battlefield in the 1948 war, leading the top (and again unorthodox) commando battalion. Under Ben-Gurion’s premiership he acted, at one time or another, as commander of Jerusalem, chief negotiator with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Minister of Agriculture, and— before and during the 1956 war—Chief of Staff. And by 1956, the black eye-patch that he hated had become, paradoxically, a sort of symbol of Israeli resistance.