Friday, September 10, 2010 Moshe Dayan profile

Friday, September 10, 2010

Moshe Dayan profile

Portrait of a national hero who had never won

Dr. Uri Milstein ([e-mail])

 

Four people shaped the security system of the State of Israel: David Ben Gurion, its first Prime Minister and Minister of Defense after the establishment of Israel; Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff during the 1950's and later Minister of Defense; Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff, Defense and Prime Minister from the early sixties until the mid nineties; and Ariel Sharon, General, Defense and Prime Minister from the sixties up to half of the first decade of the 21st century. All four belonged, in designer stages of their life, to the naive Left stream of Zionism, who believed that the Jewish state could be established in the Muslim Middle East without conflict or war. As a result of this ideology that turned to a religion, Israel did not develop a security culture that fits its security situation and is not based on a serious in-depth strategic thinking. They built a makeshift patchwork Israeli defense system, in response to Arab attacks, hoping those attacks would be followed by peace. One hundred and twenty years of Zionism proved they were wrong. Today every boy in Israel knows that the founders, and their children who continued on their way, didn't understand the strategic circumstances of the Middle East. But the defense system doesn't adjust itself to a reality due to the decisive influence which these four had on it and trust in the myth that they were praised strategists in a historic global criterion. 

 

An anti-intellectual education

  

Moshe Dayan was born in the year 1915 in the first Kibbutz, named Degania in the Jordan Valley,. Rachel, the pioneers' national poetess, was his first Kindergarten teacher. When he was six years old, his family moved to the collective village in Jezreel Valley in the Galilee. Both parents combined farm work with political activity. They and their friends hoped that their children would not become intellectuals, like Jews in the Diaspora did, but rather simple peasants. Thus their education was shallow, with an emphasis on practicality. They did not receive any military education and only superficial training. This was decisive for the future of Israel's cultural development, especially concerning the security culture.

  

Israel's future military leaders learned from experience, understanding that there was a contradiction between the humanitarian ideology of their parents which emphasized peaceful relations with the Arabs, and the reality. This contradiction forced them to disregard the ideology in which they were raised, and adopt a practical ideology suited to the moment.

  

Dayan joined the Haganah, a peoples' militia, while a juvenile and by the late-1930's he excelled as tactical commander fighting against the Arab Revolt acting in collaboration with the British authorities. Dayan was deeply influenced by the British expert on guerrilla warfare, Major General Orde Charles Wingate. But Dayan did not fully understand the meaning of combat at a strategic level.

  

Following the conclusion of the Arab Revolt, Dayan was caught with illegal weapons and imprisoned in a British prison for two years and a half. In 1941 the British formed two commando battalions of the Jews in Palestine. Their role was to help the war against the axis powers. The British trained them in minor tactics warfare. Dayan became an expert in this kind of warfare. He was appointed to command one of the companies, attached to the Australian 7th division which fought in Syria and Lebanon. In June of that year, Dayan was wounded in this operation and lost one eye. . Having recovered, he turned to defense politics. This activity interrupted his tactical career, but was vital for his strategic and political career far later. Then he met David Ben Gurion and other leaders of the Jewish political left wing. These connections helped him climb up the defense and political establishment in Israel.

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Political militia

 During the Israeli War of Independence years 1947-1949, he started as special operations commander and was responsible, among other tasks, for killing Arab Palestinian leaders. Amidst the war he was appointed to lead a commando battalion. His great success in the conquest of Lod (the only battle of his life, which he successfully Command. But there was not a real battle there, the Arabs did not fight and immediately surrendered), led David Ben-Gurion to appoint him commander of Jerusalem front with a rank of colonel.  But, in Jerusalem, Dayan failed the military operations he had initiated. His major strategic success was to negotiate an Armistice agreement with the Jordanians, which achieved a peace at that front long before the war ended on other fronts. He achieved more in the political field than in the military one. Nevertheless, because of the anti-intellectual culture, the Israelis caught up with him military and not political wisdom. Military prestige, helped him in the political area and hurt him in the military one

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Not long after the war, David Ben-Gurion removed by surprise General Yigal Allon from his position during a visit to the French army in Algeria took place. Although he was considered the most successful commander in the war, the Southern Front commander Moshe Dayan was appointed in his place . Alon belonged to an opposition political party while Dayan belonged to Ben Gurion party. Evidently, Ben Gurion proved to be guided by political considerations rather than security ones.  For five years between 1948 and 1953, the battalion commander Dayan advanced to brigade commander, to Major General heading the South Command, Major General heading the North Command and head of operations. On December 1953 Ben-Gurion appointed him Chief of Staff.

 

During those five years, the IDF deteriorated and failed in all confrontations with the Arabs. Many did not believe Israel could hold out. That is one reason the Arabs were not ready for peace with Israel. In light of Israel's military weakness, they estimated they could destroy it soon. Gen. Moshe Dayan was one of the main people responsible for this situation. Dayan's path, which is a career advancement one, is a symptom for the political militia character of the I.D.F. Moshe Dayan gained much from this situation, on the other hand, the State of Israel and I.D.F was on the losing end.

 

Unit 101 revolution

In mid-1953, the Minister of Defense appointed Ariel Sharon, against the suggestion of Dayan, to set up a company of 101 commandos. Company name was: Unit 101. This unit acted for only four months. It was the first Israeli unit since the Independence War which fought successfully. The deterioration of Israel's defense came to an end.  Then, a micro-tactical change occurred. Dayan was appointed Chief of Staff in December 1953; he immediately disbanded unit 101 and appointed Ariel Sharon to command the paratroop battalion 890. For three years, from 1954 to 1956, Ben Gurion and Dayan gave battalion 890 responsibility for responding to Arab attacks. Their success was fantastic. Sharon and his soldiers raided dozens of targets across the border, without failing even once. Consequently, (1) a revolution occurred in all IDF combatant units; (2) Arab rulers, especially President Nasser of Egypt, came to the conclusion Israel did not want peace, joined with Syria, supported by the Eastern Block, bought advanced weapons, and prepared for war; (3) Dayan arrived at the conclusion it was impossible to avoid a second round of war, especially against Egypt and persuaded Ben Gurion in 1954, to prepare for war.

 

 

Ben Gurion refused to go to war without the active participation of a world power. Opportunity came in 1956 when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain, France and Israel agreed on the plot: Israel would capture the Suez Canal; France and Britain would intervene on the grounds that the war threatened the Canal. Meanwhile, Israel would destroy the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula. The strategic idea fit Dayan's personality. But the operative planning was poor and the IDF made many errors during the war, especially by the paratroopers. Dayan's main mistake was basing his tactics on infantry while the armored corps was held auxiliary. This program was suited, post World War II to minor tactics warfare, rather not to regular warfare. A real war did not occur, because there were few Egyptian troops in Sinai, and Egypt had no chance against the three armies attacking it.

 

Strategically the operation failed. Rare cooperation, during the Cold War, between the Soviet Union and the United States, expelled the UK, France and Israel from Sinai. The Egyptian president was the war's big winner. Operational failure was expected in advance due to design deficiencies. Tactical aspects were not very meaningful because there was no real war. But with intensive propaganda and hiding most of the facts, Dayan finished the war as an international hero, in historical prespective. This would prove a disaster for Israel and for the development of the IDF: Investigations were not made, no lessons were learned. The IDF continued to be a militia. Arab leaders understood this well, thus a third round of war became inevitable.

 

Moshe Dayan was released in 1958 from the army. He joined the Ben Gurion government and served as Minister of Agriculture. Thereafter, his party split without glow or splendor. The government headed by Levi Eshkol, with IDF General Staff headed by Yitzhak Rabin did everything to minimize the role and influence of Dayan because he was an opposition leader.  If another war was not to take place, presumably his growing acclaimed prestige would serve a mere fit to his personality.

 The war that wasn't

 In 1967, neither Israel nor the Arabs were ready for war. But the IDF's Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin's analysis of the possibility of attacking Syria was leaked to Soviet agents. Soviet leaders wanted to protect their main allies in the Middle East, Egypt and Syria. They persuaded the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to place Egyptian troops in the Sinai desert, contrary to prior agreements. The crisis deteriorated into the possibility of war between Israel and all Arab countries. Since the War of Independence, in April 1948 Rabin had a PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) after he escaped from the battlefield, in the way to Jerusalem, being a brigade commander. In May 1967, when it was clear that war would break, he had a mental breakdown, was hospitalized, and received electric shock treatment in a hospital to mental patients. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol did not appoint a Chief of Staff to replace him, so as not to lower the morale of the army and of the general public. IDF had not top commander in those fateful days. 

 

Israelis did not know the details of the crisis at the top of Israel's security system, but Dayan's party leaders knew. They initiated demonstrations, demanding that PM Eshkol transfer the defense portfolio to Moshe Dayan. This was non-violent political coup. PM Eshkol gave in to public opinion and Moshe Dayan was appointed defense minister. Because there was no actual Chief of Staff, the new defense minister also played the role of Supreme Chief of Staff. Appointment of the "hero" of the Sinai war in 1956, to defense minister had greatly raised morale in the army and civilians. Dayan was in fact the leader of Israel. After a few days the IDF attacked Egypt, Jordan and Syria, through air, sea and land. Supreme commander of the war was Moshe Dayan.

  

The Six Day War, June 1967, is considered the greatest military victory of Israel, since its establishment. But if we ignore all the myths and propaganda, it becomes apparent that war did not take place at all; it was live fire maneuver against an enemy running away.

  

This is the true story of the war. Israel's air force began attacking Egyptian airfields at eight o'clock in the morning. At exactly the same time, an Egyptian plane flew to the central airbase of the Sinai Peninsula. In the plane were Vice President of Egypt and its military commander, Marshal Amer, the Egyptian air force chief, Operations Division commander, and more senior officers. Because of the visit of Egyptian senior officers, the operators of the anti-aircraft missiles, did not fire missiles against Israeli aircraft. The result: The Egyptian military airfield of Bir Gafgafah was destroyed. Marshal Amer received this information when his plane was over the Suez Canal. At the same time, he noticed through the window of his plane, Israeli aircraft flying into Egypt. Egyptian army commander had a mental breakdown. He was certain that Israel won the war, or there was a revolt in the Egyptian army. From his plane, he ordered all military commanders of Egyptian army at Sinai Peninsula to retreat westward into Egypt. For Israel it was a miracle born of a rare coincidence (or intervention force majeure) and not the result of the IDF's effective functioning. Moshe Dayan had no effect on this dramatic development.

 

Battlefield results are known: the Jordanian army immediately withdrew from all the West Bank of the Jordan, almost without a fight. The Syrian army fled from the Golan Heights. Within four days the IDF conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea and Samaria from Jordan. In the following two days the IDF captured the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel's territory quadrupled; it added natural defensible borders, and its prestige in the world soared.

 

 Careful study of this writer, for 43 years, reveals that not only a war actually did not take place then, but even under ideal conditions of the Six Day War, Israeli government function, especially the function of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and the IDF’s, was very bad. Firstly, the high command did not control the troops. Example: Dayan ordered NOT to reach the Suez Canal in any way, to keep it open after the war as an international seaway. He hoped that if the canal is operated by the Egyptians, Israel could reach a peace agreement with them.  This strategic and political idea was thwarted by the tactical level: Israeli armored and paratroopers units came up near the canal, contrary to orders, and took over its eastern shore, after the cease-fire. The using of the Suez Canal stopped for a few years. Clearly, history had been different if the IDF would not have come to it, and it would still be functioning.

 

 Secondly, in places where fighting took place, military units performed very poorly. The most prominent example was in the "Ammunition Hill" in East Jerusalem, which is the most famous battle in Israel's wars. In East Jerusalem, elite Parachute Brigade fought. It was its only real battle. The rest were incidents. However, there were no a near command, not from the brigade commander and not the battalion commander. The company commander orders for attacked malfunctioned. The same is true regarding the units' commanders who came to help. There was a face to face battle with many casualties on both sides. IDF did not investigate the "Ammunition Hill Battle." Its shortcomings were not exposed. Its lessons were not learned. Paratroopers Brigade commander of this battle, Mordechai Gur, moved quickly to senior positions in the army. After six and a half years he was appointed Chief of Staff. After his discharge Moshe Dayan appointed him deputy defense minister.

The decline

After the war, Dayan and his friends united with their original party. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, party Secretary Golda Meir, who were suspicious of him and his friends, worked to neutralize him. Dayan continued to be Minister of Defense but the influence of the army was very limited: Eshkol and Golda appointed two chiefs of staff contrary to his opinion, Haim Bar-Lev followed by David Elazar. Both of them did not fit their role. They did not investigate the Six Day War, did not learn its lessons, did not prepare the IDF for future wars. They were mostly loyal to their political patrons, Eshkol and subsequently Golda, limiting the actions of Dayan to prevent him from reaching the premiership. This indeed was their only success. The IDF under Bar-Lev Failed in the War of Attrition against Egypt, years 1968-1972, and under the command of Eleazar scored a tie during October 1973 against Egypt and Syria. For the six and a half years following the June 1967 war, while he was defense minister, Dayan had neglected the army while working in the political system to promote him to premiership and to promote good relations between Israel and the Arabs of the Occupied Territories. He failed these two assignments.

 

The failure of the Dayan at this time was mainly intellectual. He interpreted the 1956 Sinai War, the Six Day War and the War of Attrition, as Israeli decisive victories. He concluded the IDF was very powerful (especially its air force). That it could easily defeat all the Arab armies combined, and therefore the Arabs would not unleash a war against Israel in which they would surely lose then.

He believed he produced this "wonderful" situation. He tried to convince the Israeli public it was the case, to be a national leader in the eyes of the Israelis and to be in the eyes of the international public opinion a prominent global leader. It was a comfortable situation for everybody:  for the two heads of government, to all ministers, to the two chiefs of staff of the IDF's and to all senior commanders. All of them rested on the laurel of victory believing no war would break out, since Moshe Dayan was considered such a big hero as he presented himself. The situation only got worse because the military intelligence head in I.D.F, General Eli Zeira used to be Dayan's military assistant. Zeira arrived at the time to the status of "national forecaster". His estimates were regarded as very established and professional. He was Dayan's nominee to be the next Chief of Staff. The trouble was they were identical to estimates made by Dayan. Zeira labeled these estimates "professionalism", since they matched his Boss' will, reminiscent of the Soviet intelligence prior to Operation Barbarossa breaking out in summer 1941. It is plausible the head of intelligence actually adjusted his professional evaluation to the evaluation or to the will of the Defense Minister, repeating the Soviet intelligence heads act in the period before Barabarosa operation on June 1941.

ISRAEL was surprised when the 1973 October War broke out. Yet the main surprise was not at the intelligence level but at the operational level. All defense lines collapsed immediately, all operational plans were not working, most commanders were going into shock and did not function, Soviet anti-aircraft missiles neutralized the Israeli air force. Egyptians and Syrians achieved their strategic goals on the first day of the war. They proved they could cope with the IDF, that they could cause Israel a lot of casualties and that they could tire Israel of repeated wars. This way at least return the territories lost in June 1967. In the first two days Dayan still did not understand the defeat's meaning. After the counterattack, which was supposed to become a decisive move, failed on the third day, Dayan told the commanders of the Southern Front facing Egypt: "Israel can not defeat the enemy. Our war aim now is to obtain a ceasefire." So according to Klausevitch’s theory, Egypt and Syria enforced their will on Israel and thus won the war.

The Israeli navy scored a perfect victory in few hours from the war start by the Arabs while the air force relied on analogue versions of the American Radar radiation seeking AGM-45 shrike, which proved ineffective against the frequency hopping of the SAM-3 and while the ground forces lacked the heavy artillery required to annihilate the '2^nd Corpus' and the '3^rd Corpus' of the Egyptian land army, which crossed the Suez canal and settled on its eastern bank for the remaining duration of the war period.

 

During the war, Dayan's reputation waned in the Israeli public. After the war, there were organized protest movements of fighters returning from battle, demanding to sack Dayan out of office in the government, in order to investigate the shortcomings. Thus a commission of inquiry was established. After publishing the first conclusions, Golda Meir's government resigned. Yitzhak Rabin established his first government where Moshe Dayan was not included. In 1977, the Israeli political Left wing was defeated in the general election. Right-wing leader Menachem Begin won the elections and formed a government. Surprisingly, Moshe Dayan was appointed foreign minister. This Foreign Minister led the Israeli government to a peace agreement with Egypt. Under the agreement, Israel returned to Egypt the control of the entire Sinai Peninsula. After Mr. Begin refused to return the West Bank to Jordanian occupation or to establish a Palestinian state, Dayan resigned from the government.

The Conspiracy Theory

 

Dayan underwent a transformation from extreme Right-wing to extreme Left-wing. This strange behavior before the 1973 October War and during the war, beget the following conspiracy theory: Foreign Minister of the United States Henry Kisinger, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Dayan decided secretly to give Egypt a small military victory to restore the honor of the Egyptian army and people of Egypt. This enabled the possibility to reach a peace agreement. After the Egyptians would obtain a first small victory in the beginning, the IDF would cross the canal and take land to the west. Then, Kissinger would intervene, would force Israel to withdraw, at the first stage, from the west of the canal. Thus, he would prove the friendship between Egypt and the U.S., enabling Sadat to abandon Soviet sponsorship and move on to American patronage.

 According to secret evidence from a senior officer in the Israeli security services, to complete the program, the U.S. government forced the Prime Minister Menachem Begin, to appoint Dayan Foreign Minister in his national government. Dayan persuaded Begin to give up the entire Sinai Peninsula, for a peace treaty with Egypt, which was possible to violate at any moment. This is even though, before the war, he declared that he preferred war, and not to return the Sharm el Sheikh isthmus. This explanation reconciles all the awkward questions of that war that the accepted version doesn't settle. And even more so, the triumvirate's secret plan came true: Egypt got back the Sinai Peninsula, Israel had a peace treaty and Egypt left the auspices of the Soviet Union and joined the Western bloc.
Dayan, as an allegory
But after the war Moshe Dayan was devastated. He became one of the most hated people in Israel; the U.S. government could not help him succeed Golda Meir as prime minister. He died in 1981 from cancer a year before the IDF functioned badly and didn't carry out the assignments that were imposed on it in the first Lebanon war. The tragic end of the life of Moshe Dayan is an allegory to the IDF and to the State of Israel: Because of his anti-intellectualism, Dayan did not know the facts and didn't understand the real character of IDF, although he was also Chief of Staff and Defense minister. He was sure Egypt would get a small victory in October 1973, but instead it got a very big victory, which surprised even Sadat. This also made Kissinger rely on the evaluation of Dayan.
Before the war Sadat was afraid of the IDF. He deceived Dayan and Kiesinger and allied with the Syrians in the war. King Hussein of Jordan, reported that to Golda Meir, but Dayan convinced her that it was not true, since he had an alleged agreement with Sadat. Syrian army toppled the IDF at the Golan Heights and put at risk all the north of Israel. Dayan and IDF did not have an answer to this danger. Bravery of the Israeli fighters was what saved the state of Israel, but the price of the lives of many men was massive.

The State of Israel has lost its confidence since the October 1973 War. The Palestinians understood this and increased the pressure on it by terrorist war. The IDF has not studied the failures in the war, has neither drown conclusions, nor learned its lessons. This is the reason the I.D.F performed worse in later wars. Moshe Dayan is the main culprit for this dangerous situation. He led his contemporaries to build a militia rather than a professional army, and to produce a mythological society which hides the fact while celebrates the fiction by means of drama. But without the courage to review this reality, it cannot be changed. Israel still is around, thus this challenge remains,