No Jewish solutions here

Murray Sayle

We will never know, now, just how good a military commander Moshe Dayan was. Any list of the great captains of our time would have to put the Israeli general very high up, certainly in the first eleven, possibly the top. But, unlike Lee, Ludendorff or Napoleon, Dayan never found an opponent worthy of his talents. Even without an Austerlitz (or Waterloo) Dayan's battles were dazzling to watch, and sure, as anything is in war, of a permanent place in the history books.

For a man who spent his career giving his Arab neighbours an expensive military education, his own was highly irregular. Young Moshe was the very first baby born on the new kibbutz of Degania (`Buttercup') in Galilee, not too far from the Syrian border, in 1915. He played with the children of nearby Arab villages and learnt their difficult language, as well as his easier native Hebrew. He also handled weapons from childhood, as a member of the kibbutz defence force, and at 14 joined the semi-legal Jewish militia, Haganah, But Dayan really began his serious military studies under Captain (later MajorGeneral) Orde Wingate, the (non-Jewish) British Zionist visionary who, along with Dayan himself, can be regarded as the founder of the military philosophy of the Israeli Army.

Born in India, Wingate went to Palestine in 1936 as an intelligence officer and was instantly converted, from profound religious motives of the fundamentalist Protestant persuasion, to the Zionist cause. He wore a beard, customarily carried a copy of the Old Testament (from which he worked out his battle plans) under one arm and an alarm clock under the other, and was widely regarded in the Army as either a nutcase or a commander of genius, possibly both.

Wingate later went on to drive the Italians out of Abyssinia at the head of the Sudan Defence Force, and was killed in Burma in 1944 leading a long-range penetration group against the Japanese. Not, however, before he had made his unique contribution to the military history of the Middle East.

The problem was not new. The long contest between Arab and Jew as to who is to be the boss in Palestine/Israel was already well under way. Militant Arabs had adopted the strategy they still use, on a far larger scale, of harassing attacks against isolated Jewish settlements, usually at night, followed by a swift retreat into the protective darkness. Jewish settlers were already responding by retaliation raids against Arab villages, thus further fuelling the fires of hatred.

Wingate, well over to the Zionist side of impartiality (although nominally in Palestine simply to keep the peace), proposed that the Jews should take the offensive, and seize back the night from their tormentors. He organised Special Night Squads which roamed far afield from their home kibbutzim, ambushing Arab combat groups on their way out to attack the settlements, and thus trumping the tactical surprise which is the guerrilla's principle ace in the hole. Young Dayan joined such a squad and soon became a leader, and then Wingate's second-in-command.

After the customary spell in a British jail Dayan joined the British Army as a private on the outbreak of the Second World War, not of course out of love for our sovereign lord King George, but because Zionism's only hope clearly lay in a German defeat and a British victory (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a distasteful Arab politician posing as a clergyman, was putting it about that Adolph Hitler was a pious Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.) It was while acting as a British scout in a minor engagement in Syria that a stray bullet struck a pair of field-glasses Dayan was using, destroying his left eye.

The State of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May, 1948. Next day the combined regular armies of the surrounding Arab states, plus Iraq, moved in to destroy it. Upper Galilee, the original land flowing with milk and honey, is the heartland of Israel. The military key to the whole area is Dayan's home kibbutz, Degania. The new Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who had already spotted the talents of the one-eyed captain, sent Dayan to defend it. Available was one ragged batallion of the Haganah and four ancient cannon of French manufacture, without proper sights, which the Jews (now become Israelis) called `Napoleonchiks'. Ben-Gurion released the guns, desperately needed elsewhere, to Dayan for 24 hours. Prompt at 0400 the Syrians attacked Degania with a regular infantry brigade, supported by tanks, armoured cars, artillery and two bombers. Dayan, like many a commander before him, waited until they were on the perimeter wire of the kibbutz before he gave the order to fire. 'It made an indelible impression on me,' Dayan wrote, years later. 'They dropped everything and fled. With our fourth shell the entire Syrian attack collapsed. I thought then that you just have to bang once on a tin and they will all scatter, like birds.' The war of 1948 was Israel's Siege of Troy. 'Tanks' were hastily welded up out of boiler-plate and old lorries in the back streets of Tel Aviv, and rushed to the front. German pilots flying British-built Spitfires for the Eygptian Air Force dog-fought with Jews in Messerschmitts, rented for an imaginary film called Wings over Africa, over the ancient cities of the Holy Land. An Egyptian armoured thrust up the Mediterranean coast from Sinai was stopped by the defence force of the kibbutz, Yad Mordechai, named in memory of the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The result was the sore thumb of misery famous since as the Gaza Strip.

Two startling military conclusions emerged from the 1948 war. In a last-minute sprint for the Red Sea, the Israelis took Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba (old T. E. Lawrence territory) thus cutting the Arab world neatly in two. But, despite the heroic efforts of Colonel Dayan and the Israeli shock force, Pa/mach (of which he was, interestingly, not a member), the Israelis failed to dislodge the only competently-trained and -led force on the other side, MajorGeneral Sir John Glubb's Arab Legion, either from the Old City of Jerusalem or the immense hilly salient the world now knows as the West Bank.

The Israel which thus resulted from the war of 1948 (the only one which, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, they lawfully hold now) was thus a strange dumb-bell-shaped country, with a waist, in the coastal region of Herzlia, only 17 kilometres wide. Arab infantry following a well-laid artillery barrage could, with luck, cut Israel in half in an afternoon. Each side thus had (and would have again, in the utterly improbable event that Israel ever goes back to her 1948-1967 borders) the other at an impossible strategic disadvantage. Religious, political, nationalistic and many other elements enter the quarrel, but the military equation alone is quite enough to keep the contestants at each other's throats.

From the Israeli viewpoint, there was a further unpleasant discovery: one Arab army, at least, had stood its ground. And a ray of hope: Ben-Gurion had found his general. Shortly after the 1948 war Dayan was sent to do a course at the British Staff College at Camberley, whose most distinguished graduate he is (he has my vote, anyway). In 1953 Dayan became chief of staff of the Israeli Army, and in the war of 1956 he had his first opportunity to show what he could do.

Zahal (Zva Haganah Ysrael, the Israel Defence Force, usually called IDF in English) is the most remarkable army of our time, certainly among those I have seen. Israel's permanent forces hardly amount to 20,000 men (and some women, who do much what women do in other armies, and are certainly not used in combat). In an emergency Israel can field close to half a million men within 24 hours. Their system of mobilisation is secret, and changes all the time, but is clearly based on coded cryptic messages broadcast by Kol Ysrael, the equivalent of the BBC.

The officers frequently turn up at the front in their own cars, the rank-and-file in overalls, beach shorts or whatever they happen to have on when the call comes. Corn bat rations as often as not are cases of oranges. Transport is provided by fleets of American-built trucks and Russian ones captured in Israel's many wars (there is a whole industry building Russian spare parts in Petah Tiqvah, near Tel Aviv), but is also likely to include kibbutz wagons, Tel Aviv buses, vans from (kosher) butcher shops and breakdown trucks from civil garages. All this system was, basically, developed during Dayan's years as CoS.

But it is on the tactical doctrines of the IDF that Dayan has left an indelible mark, which, in turn, bears the clear stamp of his mentor, Wingate. The whole male Jewish population of Israel only amounts to some 2 million, and a lot of their army are obviously reservists getting somewhat long in the tooth. Like Jellicoe at Jutland, an Israeli general is in a position to lose his war in a single unlucky day. The message is drilled into every new IDF recruit: 'other armies have strategic depth, they can absorb reverses and make tactical retreats. We can't. Zahal cannot afford to fail, even once.'

You would therefore expect such an army to be ultra-cautious, husbanding lives to the last minute, marching and countermarching to avoid contact until conditions looked as near as possible perfect. Exactly the reverse is true. 'I don't want any Jewish solutions here', Dayan once told a class of young officers, setting a difficult tactical problem, and meaning this is not a game of chess we are discussing, but war. Throughout his career, Dayan's own preferred tactic was always the audacious, direct frontal assault.

Dayan followed, of course, a diverse and distinguished military company. 'I like this man, he fights' said Abe Lincoln of his favourite general, Ulysses S. Grant. `If he drinks too much, I wish he'd tell my other generals what his brand is.' Dayan, too, had a reputation for taking a drop now and again, and being a devil with the ladies, blemishes which have stained the character of many a famous commander. `L'audace, toujours l'audace' advised Napoleon, and the US Marine Corps expresses the same idea in homelier language with its own motto, 'Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle.'

Dayan, however, took audacity to a point that would have made even Napoleon a little nerveux, especially in the war of 1956 (`Suez' to us) which shows everywhere the impress of Wingate's ideas. This campaign, undertaken after a shabby political deal which was no fault of Dayan's was, in my opinion, his masterpiece. The concept was simple — a breakthrough at both ends of the Egyptian positions along Israel's Sinai border, followed by a two-pronged race to the passes which overlook the Suez Canal, enveloping the Egyptian Army and cutting its lines of communication and supply. The best the Wehrmacht ever managed across' the plains of Russia in the summer of 1941 was 20 miles a day. In the Sinai in 1956, employing essentially the same tanks, Dayan got that up to 40 miles a day. His secret was to fight his tanks without ever taking them off their transporters (huge, 16-wheel rubber-tyred trailers that carry tanks at high speed over tarred roads). The principle — deep, unexpected penetration, ignoring open flanks and the total lack of lines of communication or supply — was Wingate's, and before him, Sherman's, and even earlier, Hannibal's. Speed, shock and surprise are gambled for security. Israel cannot fight a long, safe war.

The 1967 war ('the Six Day War which has already lasted for 14 years', Dayan called it, with a characteristic wry smile, just before his death) is generally taken to have been his masterpiece, but already there were signs that the machine he had created was beginning to get out of control. By this time Dayan, retired from active command at 45 by the inflexible Zahal rule, had begun his second career as a politician, and was directing operations as Defence Minister. Once again proceedings opened with a direct attack, without artillery preparation, straight across a minefield at Khan Yunis, near the Gaza Strip, followed by an armoured race across the Sinai to the Mitla Passes overlooking the Canal. This time the Israelis made 60 miles a day, by bringing up spare tank crews on the petrol lorries and driving the tanks, lights blazing through the swirling sand, 24 hours a day. On Israel's superb internal road network the same armoured force was switched against the Syrians, and then against the wretched Arab Legion of Jordan (General Glubb long since sacked by King Hussain for political not military reasons). At the points of decision, the Israelis never had a numerical advantage of less than.three to one, and against the Jordanians ten to one. Brutal as it sounds, this is the key to successful generalship — provided, of course, the would-be Cromwell or Dayan has correctly selected the point of decision.

The Six Day War, dazzling in its conception, was ugly to watch, even beyond most wars. Dayan's daughter, Yael, put it well — 'it is a hunt and not a fight.' And it exposed, glaringly, the weaknesses in Dayan's system — insubordination among senior officers, divided counsel at the top, and interference in military decisions by Israeli public opinion heavily influenced by tribes of amateur Moshe Dayans.

Dayan was cheerful at the press conference he gave correspondents on the seventh day of the Six Day War, but, just the same, he didn't seem quite as overjoyed as he might have been. 'Such a defeat as this, no one needs,' he observed, in his highly personal mixture of Hebrew accent and Yiddish turns of phrase. Later we learnt that the seizure of both the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights had been done against his advice. 'Anyone with an ounce of sense should keep away from the Canal,' he later told his cabinet colleagues. 'It is a foot on Egypt's neck. They will never agree to a ceasefire and the war will go on for years.' The attack on Syria, a regime so closely under Russian protection would, he feared, 'Sovietise the conflict.' Both operations had been carried out by exuberant local commanders, without the authority either of Dayan or his then Chiefof-Staff, Lieut-General Yitzhak Rabin. The noisier end of Israel public opinion was overjoyed, thinking that possession of the Golan and the Canal kept the Arabs further away from Israeli cities, and believing they might somehow be used as bargaining counters against Palestinian claims for an Israel of their own.

The old Israel, precarious in its geographical shape and position, still had many of the advantages once enjoyed by Prussia (the comparison is, of course, military and not political) — short internal lines of communication, compact territory, enemies who could at least potentially be divided against each other. Greater Israel, with its new conquests, lost most of these benefits. Its enemies, fearful of further expansion, united. In 1973 the inevitable happened — Egypt attacked at one end, Syria at the other, and it was no longer possible to defeat one and then switch the main weight of armour against the other, now hundreds of miles distant.

Besides, the nature of armoured war had changed. Dayan was the greatest master we had left of the combination of armour and close tactical air support, both products of complex industry and sophisticated military schools. The war of 1973 showed that a peasant farmer who was prepared to stand his ground, armed with a wire-guided rocket the size of a suitcase or a shouldercarried SAM (surface to air missile) could bring down a university graduate flying a three-million-dollar Phantom fighterbomber. The age-old see-saw of war, knowledge versus numbers, was swinging back to favour the big batallions. Zahal, once again, did not fail; but it faltered, and for a few days things looked grim indeed. Dayan, who never wanted the Canal or the Heights in the first place, was conveniently available to take the blame.

I last saw him in the flesh stepping out of his helicopter on the outskirts of Suez City, during the war of 1973. 'I have no idea what the Russians or Americans think about all this,' he told a dusty group of correspondents, cheerful as ever, radiating confidence. 'We are down here fighting the Egyptian Army. They attacked us. We seem to be doing quite well. We'll think about the philosophy later.' But his problem — how to convert a dazzling string of victories into some form of permanent security for his country — seemed as far from solution as it ever was.

Dayan was a kindly man, especially considering the trade he followed. He was, for instance, a consistent opponent in the Israeli Cabinet of capital punishment for terrorists/guerrillas/freedom fighters. 'We'd have a string of hanged Arabs behind us now', he used to say. 'Would we be any further forward?' Nor was he under any illusions about the basic reasons behind the conflict. 'We came here to build a State for ourselves', he once told a visiting group of Jewish businessmen. 'We didn't come here to do anything for the Arabs. Why should they like us?'

As I see it, and as I think Dayan saw it, Israel's predicament is not political, but moral and military, and it is insoluble. The old Israel could not be defended indefinitely, even by a Dayan, and the supply of commanders of his class is severely limited, perhaps one in a generation. Nor will Israeli public opinion ever accept a 'peace' that once more brings a Jewish settlement within range of an Arab gun.

The alternative is annexation of more Arab land, under some or another disguise, to secure strategic depth. But this more or less guarantees permanent Arab hostility, and a sullen Arab population under perma nent occupation. Dayan was not a particularly religious man but he was a decent one and he was, of course, Jewish, to his fingertips. Challenged to recite the Talmud, (the ancient compilation of Jewish religious law) while standing on one foot the famous Rabbi Hillel once replied, 'Do not do to your neighbour what is hateful to you. The rest is commentary.'

In Israel's military situation, they cannot treat their neighbours as themselves, much as most Israelis long to. Probably better than anyone, Dayan, a great Jew and one of the greatest soldiers of his time, felt the anguish of his country's predicament. It was this stress, I think, that took him from us all too soon.