Minister Abba Eban, among others-all would like to become prime minister soon. But for no one has this ambition become so much a central theme in his life as it has for Dayan. Therein lies his great strength; no one becomes a supreme leader unless he is prepared to sacrifice everything, all other interests, to this one goal. A man interested in many things, with an open mind and intellectual curiosity, would find it hard to compete with one who singlemindedly concentrates on the attainment of power.
The man who first realized this about Dayan, was his old mentor, Gen. Yitzhak Sadeh, the legendary commander of the Palrnach, the underground Haganah commando, the man who nurtured most of the outstanding commanders of the Israeli Army. A short time before he died he told me, "This is the most dangerous man in Israel. One has to watch him constantly. He has no scruples, no inhibitions, no morals. He is capable of anything.'' To make his point, Sadeh told me a hypothetical story: "Some day Ben-Gurion will assemble all the commanders of the army and tell them that Yitzhak Sadeh has to be arrested. He will ask for a volunteer. One after another, all the generals will back out on one pretext or another. Only one will agree to do it. That will be Moshe Dayan." After a minute's thought, Sadeh added, "And if Dayan has to be arrested, I'll do it."
Has Dayan any set ideology? The answer seems to be in the negative. Yet no man, and certainly no one in political life, is really devoid of an ideological outlook, even if an unconscious one.
Dayan is a non-intellectual, if not an anti-intellectual. Rarely does he read a book; his education is minimal and narrow. His speeches and articles, always to the point, are shallow, without depth of thinking or width of perspective; while interesting, they are not impressive, and seldom open new vistas. He has only contempt for thinkers, viewing abstract thought as a sign of weakness. Once, when accused of doing things without thinking, he retorted that