Dayan on the Problem Confronting Israel (1956)

More from Avi Shlaim in The Iron Wall, this time an extraordinary insight into the mentality of the first post-independence generation of Israeli leadership. This is a quotation from Moshe Dayan, he of the eye patch, perhaps the most adventurous and very likely the smartest of the crew. Dayan is speaking “at the funeral of one Ro’i Rotberg, a young farmer from Kibbutz Nahal-Oz who was murdered by Arab marauders in April 1956:”

Yesterday morning Ro’i was killed. The quiet of spring morning blinded him, and he did not see the murderers lying in wait for him along the furrow. Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred for us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.

We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. . . . Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and await the moment when their hand will be able to reach our blood. Let us not avert our gaze, for it will weaken our hand. This is the fate of our generation. The only choice we have is to be prepared and armed, strong, and resolute, or else our sword will slip from our hand and the thread of our lives will be severed.

Shlaim comments:

Dayan was clearly not insensitive to Arab feelings. He recognized the injustice that his country had inflicted on hundreds of thousands of Arabs. But his very empathy bred deep pessimism concerning the possiblityof an accommodation with them. It was not self-righteousness but the conviction that Israel's survival ws at stake that led him to reject any magnanimity. ...

Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall 101-2 (Paperback ed. 2001)