Acclaimed Israeli author Yael Dayan, who entered politics after the death of her father, war hero and politician Moshe Dayan, died in May and became a vocal critic of women’s rights, LGBTQ issues and Palestine Supporter of a two-state solution to the conflict. She is 85 years old.
Her daughter Racheli Sion-Sarid said the cause of death was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Ms. Dayan is Mr. Dayan’s last surviving child. Mr. Dayan served as Israel’s Defense Minister during the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He weathered the world wars with the British – and was certainly the patriarch of a family dynasty that many Israelis compare to the Kennedys.
Mr. Dayan’s wife, Ruth, is the founder of the fashion company Maskit. Their son Assi is an actor and film producer. Another son, Ehud, was a sculptor.
Ms. Dayan became a literary star at the age of 20 with “The 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 the camp,” she wrote. “He said he was passing by and decided to drop by. He would never admit that he came to see me. Of course, his arrival was a big deal – an opportunity for a clever but often unnecessary salute, an alert and curious look chance. Will he kiss her when he leaves?
Novelist Anzia Yezierska wrote in The New York Times Book Review that “A New Face in the Mirror” is “an extraordinary record of the inner life of a rebellious teenager seeking self-actualization.” She added, “There’s an honesty and compulsive intensity in the telling of her story that haunts us long after we’ve finished reading the book.”
Other books followed. In 1967, Ms. Dayan published two books: “Death Has Two Sons,” a father-son novel set during the Holocaust, and “Diaries of Israel,” a diary of her experiences during the Six-Day War .
In an essay by Charles Poore, a book reviewer for The Times for nearly 40 years, Ms. Dayan compared how the war changed her to an essay by Ernest Hemingway in the Israel Magazine. Compare: “Nothing is the same now. I have observed the end of life, the destruction of matter, the sorrow of the destroyer, the agony of the victor, and it must leave its mark.”
After her father’s death in 1981, Ms. Dayan decided to try her hand at politics.
“As long as he was alive, everything seemed wrong,” she told the American Jewish magazine Lilith.
As a member of the Labor Party, she served three terms in Parliament. She was instrumental in passing legislation prohibiting sexual harassment. She also established the Parliamentary Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality and supported measures to protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination.
Ms. Dayan has been a sometimes divisive figure in Israeli politics.
In 1992, she outraged her party and its leader, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, by appearing in a bikini on a beach in Tel Aviv during Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest holiday.
Ms Dayan, for her part, was furious that her sunbathing behavior had become a national scandal.
“Is it forbidden by religious people to take pictures of women in bathing suits?” she told the Hebrew newspaper Hadashot in an interview. “Why would they want to see this picture?”
Her most controversial political act came the following year, when she became the first member of the Knesset to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. She gave him a book about her father, My Father, His Daughter (1985), in which she wrote about his numerous extramarital affairs.
Mr Arafat “isn’t very attractive in public,” she told the Toronto Star after the meeting. “But that disappeared quickly. He was a good listener. Very quick. Humorous and gentle. When I saw him, he was a very worried person.
She believed that the only solution to the Palestinian conflict was the establishment of an independent state—a view she never wavered from. She opposes Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
“It’s unbelievable that we still have to discuss the Palestinian right to self-determination,” she told The Star. “We still doubt whether they are human. It’s so stupid, like an ostrich hiding its head.
Yael Dayan was born on February 12, 1939, in Nahalal, a farming community in what is now northern Israel.
Considered a child prodigy from an early age, she began reading at the age of three. She began working on “New Faces in the Mirror” when she was 17 years old.
After serving as a captain in the public relations department of the Israel Defense Forces, she studied international relations at Hebrew University.
Ms. Dayan married Mr. Sharon’s Dov Sion in 1967. a son, Dan Sion, and four grandchildren.
Even when it puts her in danger, Ms. Dayan continues to advocate for peace.
In 1996, while visiting Hebron, a West Bank city home to hundreds of settlers, a Jewish extremist approached her and offered her a cup of tea. Ms. Dayan accepted. The man threw tea in her face, the Jerusalem Post reported. She had burns on her neck and chest.
Ms. Dayan continues her tour.
A few days later, someone sent her a newspaper photo of the incident and wrote: “Too bad there’s no acid.”
