Acclaimed Israeli author Yael Dayan, who entered politics after the death of her father, war hero and politician Moshe Dayan, and advocated for women’s rights, LGBTQ issues and a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, announced her death in May. Died. At her home in Tel Aviv on the 18th. She was 85 years old.
Her daughter Racheli Sion-Sarid said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Mr. Dayan was the last surviving child of Mr. Dayan, who served as Israel’s Minister of Defense during the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Wearing a distinctive black eyepatch, he lost his left eye in battle. With Britain during World War II, he was the undisputed patriarch of a family dynasty that many in Israel likened to the Kennedys.
Mr. Dayan’s wife Ruth was the founder of the fashion house Maskit. Their son Assi was an actor and film producer. Another son, Ehud, was a sculptor.
Ms. Dayan rose to literary stardom at the age of 20 with ‘A New Face in the Mirror’ (1959), an autobiographical novel written in English about a young female soldier whose father was a military commander.
“One day my father came to camp,” she wrote. “He said he was passing by and would stop by. He would never admit that he came to see me. Of course, his arrival was an event. It was an opportunity for clever and often unnecessary salutes and alert, curious eyes. Will he kiss her when he leaves?”
In The New York Times Book Review, novelist Anzia Yezierska called “A New Face in the Mirror” “an extraordinary record of the inner life of a rebellious youth seeking self-actualization.” She added, “There’s an honesty and a compulsive intensity to her story that haunts us long after we’ve finished reading the book.”
Other books followed. In 1967, Ms. Dayan published two books, her Holocaust-set father-son novel Death Has Two Sons and The Israel Journal, which chronicled her experiences in the Six-Day War. Ariel Sharon, who later became Prime Minister.
In prose that Charles Poore, The Times’ book reviewer for nearly 40 years, compared to a book review by Ernest Hemingway, Mr. Dayan wrote in the “Israel Journal” about how the war changed him: He saw the disappearance of life, the destruction of matter, the sorrow of the destroyer, the agony of the victor, but he could not help but leave a trace.”
Mr. Dayan decided to enter politics after his father passed away in 1981.
She told the Jewish-American magazine Release: She said, “It never seemed like the right thing to do while he was alive.”
As a Labor member, she served three terms in the Knesset. She was instrumental in passing legislation banning sexual harassment. She also established the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality and supported measures to protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination.
Mr. Dayan has at times been a divisive figure in Israeli politics.
In 1992, she outraged her party and its leader, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when she was photographed in tabloids wearing a bikini on a Tel Aviv beach during Yom Kippur, the holiest holiday in the Jewish calendar. Yes.
Mr Dayan was furious that his sunbathing had become a national scandal.
“Aren’t photos of women in swimsuits prohibited for religious people?” She said this in an interview with Hebrew-language newspaper Hadashot. “Why are they looking at this picture?”
Her most controversial political action came the following year, when she became the first member of the Knesset to meet Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. She presented him with a copy of “My Father, His Daughter” (1985), a book about her father in which she wrote about his numerous extramarital affairs.
“It’s not very attractive to be seen in public,” Arafat told the Toronto Star after the meeting. “But that disappears quickly. He is a good listener. Very fast. He is humorous and gentle. “When I saw him, he was a really worried person.”
She believed that the only solution to the Palestinian conflict was a separate state, and she never wavered in that opinion. She opposed Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
“It is inconceivable that we should still be discussing Palestinian self-determination,” she told The Star. “We still doubt whether they are human. “This is so stupid, it’s like an ostrich burying its head,” she said.
Yael Dayan was born on February 12, 1939, in Nahalal, a rural area in what is now northern Israel.
Considered a prodigy from an early age, she began reading at the age of three. She skipped several grades in elementary school. She began writing ‘A New Face in the Mirror’ when she was 17 years old.
After serving as a captain in the public relations unit of the Israel Defense Forces, he studied international relations at Hebrew University.
Ms. Dayan married Colonel Dov Sion, who was under Mr. Sharon’s command during the 1967 Six-Day War. He died in 2003. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a son, Dan Sion, and four grandchildren.
Mr. Dayan has consistently advocated for peace, even when faced with danger.
In 1996, while she was touring Hebron in the West Bank, home to hundreds of settlers, a Jewish extremist approached her and offered her a cup of tea. Mr. Dayan accepted. According to The Jerusalem Post, the man threw the car at her face. Her neck and chest were burned.
Mr. Dayan continued his tour.
A few days later, someone mailed her a newspaper photo of the incident and wrote, “It’s a shame there’s no mountain.”
