WARRIOR STATESMAN

An engaging look into the private and public life of Moshe Dayan, Israeli soldier, politician, and diplomat. No plodding biography, this is lengthy but fast-paced reportage by the Time magazine Jerusalem correspondent who wrote This...Is CBS (1988), Portraits in Silicon (1987), and Golda (1981). Slater paints a sympathetic, though candid, portrait of the eye-patched walking symbol whose love of country was equalled only by his love of self. Dayan's amicable relations with Arabs are traced to his youth, when he rejected his father's notions that most of them were dangerous and somehow inferior. Always preferring peaceful coexistence to an adversarial stance, Dayan, ironically, was appointed chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces in 1953, and it was he who become the world-famous slayer of the Arab Goliath. The army catapulted Dayan to power, and Shimon Peres assured David Ben-Gurion, ``You can trust Dayan 100 per cent.'' Here, Dayan emerges as a cocky military and political figure who became intoxicated with power over the next 20 years. The Israeli public, if not his family, idolized him and forgave him for a string of private indiscretions—which always became public sensations. His glow of invincibility from the Six-Day War blacked out in the Yom Kippur War. Certain that the Arabs would not attack and risk another major defeat, Dayan left Israel unprepared for the onslaught by Syria and Egypt. The Israelis never forgave Dayan for the costly error, and he never forgave himself. Besides all the quotations from movers and shakers on the political scene, Slater reveals intimate conversations with Dayan's wives, lovers, and children. No eyes are patched in this juicy, well-researched book.