PJ Media

Yes, Tommy. Raful versus Rafael; Raful being the fairly straight-shooting part-Cossack CoS and politician; Rafael being the Mossad guy. I once met Raful Eitan. It was a frightening experience in a semi-comical sort of way. The fear I felt was a good indication of what that type of Israeli can do to nervous Arabs.

Wow, Dayan and Barak. No real comparison. First, Dayan was a leader, though he too was of the Labour school, and had little understanding of the need to assert Jewish primacy over critical sites like Har Habayit, the Temple Mount. Still, he understood Arabs, knew Arabic, felt an intrinsic tie with the Land of Israel in an old-fashioned, secular sort of way. That is, the Tanach/Bible lived in Moshe Dayan. Of course, he was also a miserable womanizer. But anyhow – Dayan grew up in the Palmach. He was one of the elite young Israelis who was trained by one of the true founders of Israel, the Scottish
(?) Britisher Orde Wingate, a deeply religious who founded the Palmach. It is an acronym that stands for Plugot Machatz, Strike Companies. They raided into Arab territory, and they defended the countryside of Israel, beginning in the 1930s. Wingate understood that Israel would have to fight for its life one day, the minute it declared statehood – really, before this. Dayan and people like Yigal Alon, who became one of B-G’s generals in the Milchemet Ha’atzmaut/Independence War were among Wingate’s pupils. Yigal Alon – a fine man, later Foreign Minister of Israel, a kibbutznik from the Sea of Galilee. These were the Salts of the Earth types.

Dayan was of course a pol from the outset, making grand use of the eyepatch. He of course made lots of enemies. Rabin and Weizmann prepared the army for an extension of Wingate’s philosophy, which came to materialization in 1967. Dayan was out of the army, supposedly out of politics. He was recruited back in as Defense Minister. When Yitzhak Rabin had a nervous breakdown before the Six Day War, Dayan’s profile grew. In reality, Ezer Weizmann took over when Rabin failed, and people like Sharon and many others did the real work. But Dayan rallied the people. He was either DM or FM inh ’73. There he and Golda made the decision to listen to threats from Nixon/Kissinger and failed to preempt the Syrians and Egyptian, though they knew several days before 6 October what was coming. Nixon threatened Israel with isolation if it did not absorb the first blow. My cousin and many others died as a result. A friend of mine lost his entire leg, and many times I watched and tried to help when he struggle with his prosthetic. He alone survived from a group of four tanks and their crews who got surrounded in Sinai by 200 Egyptian tanks…Dayan’s nerve failed then, I think. Then he became a dove, more reluctant than Ezer Weizmann, who became very corrupt.

We can evaluate Dayan also in terms of our view of the Camp David Accords. I suppose they were necessary, mostly because Israel’s economy was in desperate shape then. But they gave away much too much. Few Israelis have figured out how to negotiate with the Arabs and their American interlocutors.

Ehud Barak. I guess I’ll save him for another post. I am tired. I had an outing with my Mom today, and I am tired.