Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader & politician.
As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli
War, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–58)
during the 1956 Suez Crisis, but mainly as Defense Minister
during the Six-Day War in 1967, he became a worldwide
fighting symbol of the new state of Israel. In the 30s,
Dayan joined the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish defense force
of Mandatory Palestine. He served in the Special Night Squads
under Orde Wingate during the Arab revolt in Palestine &
later lost an eye in a raid on Vichy forces in Lebanon
during WWII.
On 7 June 1941, the night before the invasion of the Syria–
Lebanon Campaign, Dayan's unit crossed the border & secured
two bridges over the Litani River. During the time, Dayan
served under the command of British Lieutenant General Sir
Henry M. Wilson. When they weren't relieved as expected, at
04:00 on 8 June, the unit perceived that it was exposed to
possible attack &—on its own initiative—assaulted a nearby
Vichy police station, capturing it. A few hours later, as
Dayan was on the roof of the building using binoculars to
scan Vichy French positions on the other side of the river,
the binoculars were struck by a French rifle bullet fired by
a sniper from several hundred yards away, propelling metal
& glass fragments into his left eye & causing severe damage.
Six hours passed before he could be evacuated, & he would've
died if not for Bernard Dov Protter, who took care of him
until they were evacuated. Dayan lost the eye. In addition,
the damage to the extraocular muscles was such that Dayan
couldn't be fitted with a glass eye, & he was compelled to
adopt the black eye patch that became his trademark.
Letters from this time revealed that despite losing his
left eye & suffering serious injuries to the area where
the eye was located, Dayan still pleaded with Wilson to be
reenlisted in combat. He also underwent eye surgery in 1947
at a hospital in Paris, which proved to be unsuccessful.
In the years immediately following, the disability caused
him some psychological pain. Dayan wrote in his autobio:
"I reflected with considerable misgivings on my future as a
cripple without a skill, trade, or profession to provide
for my family." He added that he was "ready to make any
effort & stand any suffering, if only I could get rid of my
black eyepatch. The attention it drew was intolerable to me.
I preferred to shut myself up at home, doing anything,
rather than encounter the reactions of people wherever I went."
Dayan was born on 20 May 1915 in Kibbutz Degania Alef, near
the Sea of Galilee in Palestine, in what was then Ottoman
Syria within the Ottoman Empire, one of 3 kids born to
Shmuel & Devorah Dayan, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from
Zhashkiv. Kibbutz Degania Alef, with 11 members, was the
first kibbutz, & would become part of the State of Israel.
Dayan was a Jewish atheist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan
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Degania Alef is a kibbutz in northern Israel. The Jewish
communal settlement started off in 1910, making it the
earliest socialist Zionist farming commune in the Land of
Israel. Its status as "the mother of all kibbutzim" is
sometimes contested based on a later distinction made
between the smaller kvutza, applying to Degania in its
beginnings, & the larger kibbutz.
It falls under the jurisdiction of the Emek HaYarden
Regional Council. Degania Alef & its neighbor Degania Bet
both lie between the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee
& the Jordan River. As of 2019 it had a population of 528.
In 2007, Degania Alef moved to undergo privatisation.
Instead of assigned jobs & equal pay under the former
communal economy, the reorganisation requires members to
find employment, live on their income, & allows them to
own their homes, but still offers a form of a social
"safety net" supplement for members whose livelihood is
inadequate to meet their expenses. This move to privatisation
was chronicled in Yitzhak Rubin's 2008 documentary,
Degania: The First Kibbutz Fights Its Last Battle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degania_Alef
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