Yael Dayan, former MK, deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, city council member, author and journalist, passed away on Saturday at age 85.
The daughter of Moshe and Ruth Dayan, she was born in 1939 in the northern moshav of Nahalal, founded by her grandfather, Shmuel. She was the eldest of three children, having two younger brothers, Udi and Assi.
Considered to be the left-wing standard-bearer in the Labor Party, Dayan promoted human rights during her tenure in the Knesset.
Her family and friends called her “Yula,” and she was considered a “child prodigy.” She skipped several grades in elementary school, graduating at the age of 12 and finishing high school at 16 and a half. Before her military service, she studied for a year at university. When she enlisted in the IDF in 1956, her father was the chief of general staff. She completed an officer’s course, commanded recruits, worked with new immigrants, and served in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
In her childhood and youth, she wrote many poems and short essays, some of which were published in Maariv, Davar, and Davar for Children. However, it was a book she published at the age of 20 that first brought her into the spotlight. The book, initially written in English, was titled New Faces in the Mirror, which gained her much recognition and was published by foreign publishers.
The book, a first-person novel written by an IDF officer named Ariel Ron, caused a stir when translated into Hebrew. It was considered too permissive in puritanical Israel. And it was seen as an autobiographical book written by the daughter of the outgoing chief of general staff.
Maariv newspaper published the book in installments, and angry letters from readers poured in. Titles of the letters included: “Thank God, there is also another youth,” “I was stunned,” and “It does not suit Maariv.”
One reader saw the book as “a severe blow to the honor of the daughters of Israel” and did not understand how an IDF officer could write such things, especially being furious at “the author describing her lovemaking on the beach until dawn.” He saw it as “an affront to the honor of the State of Israel, for which the IDF is the crowning glory of the revival of the Jewish people.”
Dayan continued writing, publishing three more books: Jealous of the Frightened, Dust, and Two Sons to Death, all originally written in English. Throughout her life, she wrote nine books.
Early adventures
In the closed-off Israel of the early 1960s, Dayan was a worldly woman, traveling to France, Greece and the United States – and even to India, many years before it became known to Israelis. In Israel, she lived in the artistic village of Ein Hod. During this period, she also continued her academic studies.
She made her first foray into politics in the elections for the sixth Knesset in 1965, participating as a speaker at election rallies for Rafi, the party of David Ben-Gurion, who had split from Mapai. Her father was a prominent supporter of the prime minister.
Shortly before the Six Day War, Dayan returned from Greece after her father hinted that a war might break out. She reported to her reserve unit in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and was attached to Ariel Sharon’s Division 38 a week before the war began. Throughout the fighting, she was close to Sharon’s headquarters.
The IDF Spokesperson transmitted her reports from the front to various newspapers. In these reports, one could notice a unique perspective that characterized her writing. Alongside descriptions of battles and the joy of victory, she also sought to describe the feelings of tired, conflicted, and sad soldiers. She made sure to write about enemy soldiers and prisoners as human beings who also paid the price of war.
Standing by her father amidst public criticism
During the war, she met Lt.-Col. Dov Sion, a staff officer in the headquarters. She was 28, and he was 44. They became a couple, and a month and a half after the war ended, they married. The wedding was held in her parents’ yard (along with the wedding of her younger brother Assi to his wife, Aharona). The couple had a son, Dan, and a daughter, Rachel, who is a pediatrician married to former politician Yossi Sarid’s son, Yishai Sarid, a lawyer and writer.
The Sion-Dayans lived in France for several years as part of Sion’s military mission. When they returned to Israel in early 1973, they were surprised to find a different country, especially among the “social elite,” as she defined it. “We found bloating, vulgarity, a pursuit of impression and material competition like never before,” she said.
Eight months later, the Yom Kippur War broke out. Her father, who served as defense minister, emerged with severe criticism from the national inquiry commission, the Agranat Commission. However, the Israeli public did not forgive him for the failures that preceded the war, and he was forced to resign.
Yael Dayan, his eldest daughter, stood by him again, defending him as she continued to do even when he decided to leave the Alignment and join Menachem Begin’s Likud government after the 1977 upheaval. Even after he separated from her mother – and when she and her brother discovered that their father had left them almost nothing from the wealth and property he had accumulated – she still did not turn against him, unlike her brother.
“She loved him with a love that cannot be described,” her brother Assi said in an interview. She wrote about her relationship with her father in a book she published in 1986 titled My Father, His Daughter.
Dayan herself entered political life by joining the Labor Party in the late 1980s. In 1988, she failed to secure a realistic spot on the Labor list for the Knesset elections. Four years later, in the 13th Knesset elections, she was elected for the first time – and served as a Knesset member for ten and a half years.
In the Knesset, she led issues that had not received proper attention. During her first term, Dayan established the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women’s Status and served as its chair. She also served as the chair of the Subcommittee on the Rights of Gays and Lesbians and the Subcommittee on Violence Against Women.
She initiated and led laws to promote gender equality and protect women from violence and discrimination. Among the statutes she worked to advance were the Sexual Harassment Prevention Law, the Crime Victims’ Rights Law, the Women’s Equal Rights Law, the Minimum Sentences for Sexual and Violent Offenses Law, the Anti-Stalking Law, and more. She also worked to grant rights to gays and lesbians and is considered one of the leaders of the LGBT rights revolution.
During her tenure in the Knesset, Dayan was a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and worked to advance and strengthen the peace process. She was part of the “Group of Eight” – Knesset members who were the left-wing standard-bearers in the Labor Party. The group included Amir Peretz, Haim Ramon, Avrum Burg, and Yossi Beilin.
Ahead of the 2003 elections, she was pushed to an unrealistic spot on the Labor list and, together with Beilin, joined the Shahar movement, a bloc of left-wing parties led by Meretz. She was placed 12th and was not elected to the Knesset.
Dayan moved to the municipal arena and headed the Meretz list in the local elections in Tel Aviv. After the elections, she was appointed deputy mayor under Ron Huldai. In the 2008 elections, she ran on Huldai’s list and was re-elected as a city council member, a position she held until 2013.
Her mother, Ruth, died last year at the age of 103. Dayan suffered for nearly 20 years from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease caused by years of smoking, which caused irreversible damage and progressively worsened her lung function despite her having quit smoking upon diagnosis.
“We mourn the passing of former MK Yael Dayan, a partner on the path, who led many feminist struggles and brought about the legislation of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Law,” eulogized Orit Sulitzeanu, CEO of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. “Yael Dayan was a trailblazer, courageous, and gave a clear and strong voice against violence against women. We will remember her forever.”
Amir Peretz, former Labor Party chairman and defense minister, and current chairman of Israel Aerospace Industries, also paid tribute: “Yael Dayan and I were part of the same group in the Labor Party of the 1980s, a party that contended for power but did not achieve it in those days,” he said.
“The ‘Group of Eight’ led by Haim Ramon led many struggles in social justice, equality, and the pursuit of peace. Yael was part of us, and it soon became clear how much she and I found common ground in the central issues and the worldview that political solutions and social justice must go hand in hand.”
Hagit Pe’er, chairwoman of Na’amat, said that Dayan was “the first chairwoman of the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women, who led the fight for gender equality as well as other struggles such as the fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community in Israel. We lost a fighter for justice. Rest in peace.”
Israel Gay Youth (IGY) also commented: “We mourn the passing of one of the pioneers in the struggle for gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights in Israel. In every position she held, she broke the glass ceiling for all of us, and she was the first public figure to appear at an official LGBTQ+ event. Yael inspires us in the fight for justice and breaking conventions, and we will continue to cherish her as such in feminist, LGBTQ+ and Israeli history.”