Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Moshe Dayan

Israeli Military and Political Leader including Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Defense Minister and Foreign Minister of Israel

"I am not supposed to be an expert in every field. I am supposed to be an expert in picking experts."

"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat — in the place of Jibta, Sarid — in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua — in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

"There is no more Palestine. Finished."

"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."

"Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land ... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us."

"The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [is retaliation]. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has not value. But if we harass the nearby village . . . then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] . . . and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is [assailed], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war . . . the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective."

"Using the moral yardstick mentioned by [Moshe Sharett], I must ask: Are [we justified] in opening fire on the Arabs who cross [the border] to reap the crops they planted in our territory; they, their women, and their children? Will this stand up to moral scrutiny . . .? We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry arabs who cross the line — will this stand up to moral review? Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg. . . [It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know no other method of guarding the borders. then tomorrow the State of Israel will have no borders."

"Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to 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 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 wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood."

"We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying. . . It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness."

"During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road."

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul."

"A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal."

"My policies often change, sometimes radically. But so do circumstances. I like to think of myself as one of those people who adapt."

"Soldiers of Israel, we have no aims of conquest. Our purpose is to bring to naught the attempts of the Arab armies to conquer our land."

"Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood. "

"We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Jewish state. Jewish villages were built in the place of the Arab villages. You don't even know the names of the Arab villages, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only the books do not exist, the Arab villages are not there either -- there is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

"It was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying. "

"Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice. "

"After all, we are not children. It's time we planned our life."

"All that is required is to find an officer, even a captain would do, to win his heart or buy him with money to get him to agree to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, occupy the necessary territory, create a Christian regime that will ally itself with Israel. The territory from Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel, and everything will fall into place. >"

"Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration, let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand."

"Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg."

"He jumped to the sky with anger about Hebron and the provocation of Levinger that has become such a tragedy."

"He would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more were bad; the remaining two, however, were brilliant."

"I am opposed to hijacking. . . . I always agreed with Ben Gurion that 1948 marked the end of [the era of] "another goat, another dunam." Hebron was a hijacking operation, a blackmailing operation against the State of Israel. Now if I, the government, am prepared to endanger children at Ma'alot [where 16 children were killed when Palestinian guerrillas took Israeli students hostage in 1974] in order not to surrender to blackmail, why do I surrender to Levinger's blackmail?"

"I can say that at the beginning of the Six-Day War, when it became clear that we were heading to an absolute victory, much bigger than we had considered, to me it was clear that most of the territories that we conquered would have to be returned the moment that there was a peace agreement. . . In the West Bank and Gaza Strip the situation is not clear from an international standpoint, because they belong neither to Jordan nor to Egypt. Here the solution has to be more with the Palestinians who live there, not with Jordan or Egypt. . . . Therefore Gaza and its environs will be possible to keep when peace comes--but Sinai, no. It's the same thing on the Golan Heights, but more complicated. The area is smaller and closer to Israel's population, and it was used always for warlike acts against our population. In addition, we established many settlements there--which caused us only tremendous problems in October 1973. We almost lost the entire war because of them--and it will be difficult to go down [from the Heights]. I saw this directly, even during the Six-Day War."

"I could be the village driver, or a watchman, a builder or a farmer, in a kibbutz or a moshav, as long as I have the peace of family life."

"I don't think we should be a model family living in a model home."

"I feel I've lived so long, and went through so much, that all I want is calm and rest."

"I have only one eye. Do you want me to look at the road or at the speedometer."

"I have the strength to endure it all."

"I make no pretenses. I'm studying day and night in order to complete my B.A. in less than two years, but I manage to be in Tel Aviv on the weekend."

"Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."

"It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers? and families? but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it."

"I know that plans and reality may be two different things, but I think my demands on life are minimal."

"I hope and believe that we will solve our problems with the Arab countries, and here I speak of all but Jordan, which presents a different problem because it is actually Palestinian, but ruled by a king who is actually Saudi. But our problem with the Palestinians is entirely different. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved if we divide the country. In the end we will have to divide the country in some fashion, but that is only part of the solution. Yitzhak Rabin once said . . . that he is prepared to visit the Etzion Bloc with a visa. . . . This is a simplistic way of approaching a complex problem. Because the question is not one of visas."

"I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table."

"If I had to resign every time the Cabinet disagrees with me, I could not last as a Defense Minister one week."

"In two cases I did not fulfill my role as defense minister, in that I did not stop things that I was sure should have been stopped."

"Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor."

"Israel must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no ? it must ? invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge..."

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

"Most important, don't do anything you don't want."

"Never mind that [when asked that Syrians initiated the war from the Golan Heights]. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was. I did that, and Laskov and Chara [Zvi Tsur, Rabin's predecessor as chief of staff] did that, Yitzhak did that, but it seems to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado [David Elzar, OC Northern Command, 1964-69]."

"QUESTION: But Levinger says that it is impossible that Jews will not be able to live anywhere in the Land of Israel? DAYAN: Yes. But that's only a slogan. Certainly legally it is forbidden to prevent Jews or Arabs for that matter from living anywhere. . . . Practically speaking, it won't work. Perhaps after 100, 150 years of sweet peace it will be possible, but not today. Levinger understands this perfectly. I stress to you that he doesn't want coexistence, he wants expulsion. He wants to make provocations that will engage the State of Israel, with the power of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], to assist him in this effort. It is the strategy of the weak--to create through provocations a situation necessitating a stronger force to act on your behalf. I didn't fulfill my responsibility as minister of defense in that I did not prevent the establishment of his piratical settlement in Hebron. I understood its significance, and knew that it would be a disaster, and I believe I should have threatened to resign. I believe there was an 80 percent chance that I wouldn't have had to resign and I could have received permission to get them out by force."

"QUESTION: The last time we spoke you said that in two instances you failed to fulfill your duty as minister of defense. One was that you didn't prevent the conquest of the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War. What was the second? DAYAN: The second, and to my mind the worse instance, with more dangerous implications for the future, is the case of the illegal settlement in Hebron. . . . I think that in this case I should have threatened to resign, and I believe, had I done that, the government would have adopted my opinion. But I didn't do it, and about that I am very sorry."

"Supreme efforts must be made to acquire more arms and ammunitions until the date of the clash, but one thing must not be made dependent on the other."

"It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness."

"It isn't a secret that my heart is damaged. All the treatments and medications haven't been effective."

"It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions."