by Dr. EUGENE SOCKUT
Israeli Prime Minister David BenGurion reflected that it was more efficient reflected that it was more efficient from a political and military standpoint to place such elite units as the Palmach under a single unified command. This was accomplished in November of 1948. Gen. Yigael Yadin, succeeding Gen. Yaakov Dori (Israel’s first chief of staff)established the structure of the new army. It was to be essentially one of reservists led by a small professional nucleus. Moshe Dayan, a protege of Ben-Gurion’s, and regarded as a military and organizational genius at an early stage in hiscareer, was put in command of Israel’s southern front with Egypt in 1949.
Dayan felt that the morale, training and equipent of the army needed rejuvenation, that an elie unit would act as an ideal to emulate and help to establish a spirit of compettitiveness. The unit was formed and named Battalion 101 By 1953 its successful exploits had a beneficial effect on the army, and Ben-Gurion soon promoted Dayan over other senior officers to be Chief of Staff.
Now Dayan began his full reorganizational concept in earnest. He recommended that:
1. Every officer should have paratroop or commando training.
2. The army was to be primarily a combat force, with every soldier undergoing combat duties.
3. A military college in Israel was to be immediately established for officers with the rank of major and above, and most officers were now to be Israeli trained.
Dayan’s insistence on these three recommendations met some opposition, but in time they were all accepted as standard army policy.Experience has proven the value of his viewpoints.
In time, Arab raids and the Arab blockade of Israele shipping in the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba triggered the outbreak of the Sinai Campaign of 1956. It was in this campaign that the new concepts of training and tactics established by Dayan proved highly successful, Israeli forces slashing across the Sinai peninsula in less than a hundred hours! But again, diplomatic pressures and the threat of economic sanctions forced the Israelis to pull back from the Sinai, as it had in 1949. Then Great Britain threatened to intervene unless the Egyptians were given back this vast desert. Dayan, in the field with his victorious troops, helped them swallow this bitter political pill.
Photo by en.wikipedia.org
