Bitter son of Moshe Dayan derides father

Press, 29 May 1982, Page 9

Bitter son of Moshe Dayan derides father

NZPA . Tel Aviv Moshe Dayan was avaricious and a philanderer, according to his son. who says the former commander of the Israeli Army and the hero of the Six-Day War of 1967 could not have been made a corporal in an enlightened country like Britain.

In excerpts from a forthcoming book. "Lite as a Side Show," which were published in "Maariv,” the Jerusalem newspaper, yesterday, Ehud Dayan, a farmer, made it clear from the opening paragraph he was venting his spleen because his father had left his fortune to his second wife. Rachel. The writer was the second of General Dayan's three children by his divorced wife. Ruth.

Mr Dayan wrote bitterly that after the will was read to the family in October last year, the lift from the lawyer’s office let out "three scalded and shamed offspring and a millionairess.”

Addressing his dead father, he said: “The day you took a strange woman into your house, the locks of your hair were shorn and you lost your power. From that day you became less and less ‘Moshe Dayan' and more the ‘Husband of Rachel.' " The elder of General Dayan's two sons. Ehud said he gave up saying “Kaddish." a doxology bereaved Jewish sons recite daily for 11 months, after only two weeks because his father had not kept half of the Ten Commandments.

Writing of his father’s philandering. he said: "A thirdclass whore taped you in her bed and extorted hush money. A cuckolded husband protested in a letter to (the late Prime Minister) BenGurion, who dismissed it, claiming The welfare of the State comes first.’ " He said that. his father took to the war rooms the same morals he took to bed.

Referring io best-selling books published by his father, he accused him of cashing in on Israeli wars when his own role in the fighting had been minimal. General Dayan, as chief of staff, led the Israeli forces to victory in the 1956 Sinai campaign. He was Defence Minister during the Six-day War and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The son wrote that his father diguised himself with a wig before his secret meeting with King Hassan in Morocco, and had told himself that would help the sale of his next book. “But why didn't you disguise yourseu when you went to meet that tourist in her hotel room?” he asked.

Saying that his father remained avaricious on his death bed, the young writer alluded to the article he published about his cancer operation. "While still in the hospital recovery room and before the anaesthetic wore off. you sold the rights to your clinical adventure. If you could, you wouldd have sole your intestines by the metre.”