Moshe Dayan

Israeli military leader and politician Moshe Dayan was born in Degania Aleph, the first kibbutz. He grew up in Nahalal and attended agricultural school. Dayan joined the Haganah at age fifteen and was imprisoned. Serving with the British army in Lebanon during World War II, he was wounded; the eye patch he wore became a symbol of the Israeli warrior-statesman. In Israel’s War of Independence, Dayan commanded the Jerusalem front; he later served as chief of staff in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1956 Suez crisis and as defense minister during the Six-Day War. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he became foreign minister in the Israeli government and helped negotiate the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.