Dani Dayan brought this profile to my attention. The person who wrote it is the resident NYT correspondent. I think it is fabulous that the New York Times has posted this article in addition to posting the Op-Ed of his, Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay. It is so rare for the NYT to publish anything favourable to Israel. On the other hand, Seth Mandel of Commentary attacked almost everything he wrote and called his proposal “wrongheaded”. I came to Dayan’s defense with Is the two-state solution doable? A few days later Atlantic posted a major article, Dani Dayan’s War which surprisingly was fair. ITS GREAT THAT DANI IS GETTING THIS COVERAGE. Ted Belman
SOME years ago, after the death of a neighborhood teenager, a psychologist asked Dani Dayan, the leader of Israel’s settler movement, what kind of life he wanted for his only child.
“If it’s for me to decide, I would like her to establish an outpost on the most challenging hill in Samaria,” Mr. Dayan recalled saying, using the biblical name for the northern swath of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “But she should never forget the road from that hill to the theaters of Tel Aviv and to the museums of Tel Aviv and to the restaurants of Tel Aviv.”
From a bedroom window in his spacious, modern home here in this settlement about 20 miles northeast of Tel Aviv, Mr. Dayan — and his daughter, Ofir, 18 — can see the lights that represent those theaters, museums and restaurants. In his mind, he and his family, just by living here in the West Bank rather than yielding it to become a Palestinian state, are a “shield” protecting those theaters and museums, and the survival of Israel itself.
“You cannot maintain a Jewish soul of a community if you detach it from history,” he said. “If Israel detaches itself from Hebron and Bet El and Shilo, it will become an empty society, a shallow society that ultimately will forget why it’s here.”
Mr. Dayan, 56, an immigrant from Argentina who got rich running an information technology company, has devoted the past five years to expanding the Jewish presence in those and other disputed historic places across the West Bank as chairman of the Yesha Council, which represents 350,000 settlers in 150 communities. Passionately ideological yet profoundly secular, he defies the caricature of settlers as gun-toting radicals who attribute their politics to God and the Torah — he travels the world collecting art and wine, and a bald spot occupies the place others reserve for a skullcap.
Mr. Dayan’s movement has had a string of successes this summer. After Israel’s Supreme Court declared the tiny outpost of Ulpana illegal because it sat on private Palestinian land, he helped negotiate 800 new settler homes in exchange for a peaceful evacuation of 30 families. A college in Ariel was elevated to university status, a first within a settlement. A government-appointed commission of three respected judges declared the entire settlement enterprise to be legal, contrary to international opinion.
Over the last month, Mr. Dayan declared victory against the two-state solution in an Op-Ed page article in The New York Times and in a lengthy article in The Atlantic. But as The Atlantic noted, he faces an internal battle among the settlers over tactics; many prefer a more principled, confrontational stand to his pragmatic, businesslike approach.
On right-wing Web sites, Mr. Dayan has been denounced as a traitor and called “a danger to settlements.” A columnist, Hanamel Dorfman, declared, “We, the youth of the settlements, of the hilltops, already don’t believe in you.”
During the fight over Ulpana, there was a move to unseat Mr. Dayan, which he survived. But some within the movement say they are closely watching how he handles the scheduled move this month of Migron, another outpost declared illegal by the Supreme Court.
“His approach is: ‘O.K., let’s work with what I can do. It’s not good, but it’s good enough,’ ” said Itzik Shadmi, chairman of the Binyamin Council, which includes about 40 settlements totaling 50,000 residents. “My approach is to fight until the end, to do some confrontation with the government, in order for everybody to understand that maybe they can win this battle but we will win the war itself.”
But Mr. Dayan’s true adversaries say his pragmatic approach has made him the most effective leader the settlers have had.
“Our challenge is to expose him,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, which opposes all settlements. “His agenda is the same as the most fanatic right-wing settlers. But he has this ability to hide it and to speak with the public with a much more sensible argument and a much more moderate image.”
MR. DAYAN — whose father, Moshe, was a second cousin of Gen. Moshe Dayan — came from Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv in 1971, in a family that revered Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the revisionist Zionist who led the underground military organization Irgun. But his brother, Aryeh, who declined to be interviewed, became a “radical leftist anti-Zionist” journalist, as both men have put it. They retain a certain closeness by never mentioning politics: Aryeh refused to attend Dani’s wedding in 1987 on the ramp leading to the Temple Mount but joined a reception afterward in West Jerusalem.
Their cousin Ilana Dayan, a television journalist, said that Dani Dayan had been immersed in politics since he came of age but that his education in computer science and economics had helped “rationalize the discourse.”
“It’s not a debate about whether the Messiah has come or is on his way,” Ms. Dayan said. “He’s talking realpolitik, he’s talking rational, he’s talking cost-benefit analysis. He will try to engage in a civilized and always intriguing argument, and he will try to convince you that from the point of view of the Zionist enterprise even the status quo is better than any Peace Now fantasy.”
To Mr. Dayan, those who believe in a two-state solution are “either naïve or liars.” He has a two-stage vision: for the next 30 to 40 years, Jews and Palestinians should continue to expand their communities in the West Bank, “with the kind of interaction that is minimal but allows people to live well.” Later, he imagines, leadership change in Jordan, where ethnic Palestinians are a majority, would lead to an arrangement in which the West Bank is jointly governed by Israel and Jordan with “shared responsibilities for two peoples between two states.”
“I see a vision of everyone living normal lives here with a political situation that has to be unique,” Mr. Dayan said one day in May. “There is no other example in history of a people dispersed for 2,000 years that comes back to its land and reclaims it. It’s a very peculiar situation and will need a peculiar solution.”
Mr. Dayan and his wife, Eynat, moved to Maale Shomron in 1988, living for two years in a trailer, as required by the settlement to prove their commitment. They built a showpiece home, where the sunken double-height living room is filled with a painting from Vietnam, a sculpture from Machu Picchu and a meditation bowl from Nepal. “This is from South Africa,” he said, pointing to a set of large wooden masks. “Post-apartheid South Africa. I refused to visit apartheid South Africa.”
TOURING the settlements with Mr. Dayan is like attending a family reunion with a proud patriarch. At a plastics factory where Jewish and Arab workers take occasional field trips together, he said, “We are much less prejudiced toward Palestinians than Israeli society as a whole.” Leaving the college in Ariel, Mr. Dayan declared, “This is exactly what I want for Judea and Samaria: it’s a university that has some ideological tone, but it’s 21st-century, and it’s integral to the fabric of Israeli society.” Sampling robust reds at the Psagot winery, he mused, “This is my dream: to make a combination of mission, ideology, good life — that’s what makes life here permanent.”
Standing on a lookout point in Elie, Mr. Dayan surveyed his empire, the red-roof settlements that dot the hills in every direction.
“When I hear Israeli politicians say there are isolated settlements that should be removed, I know they have never visited here,” he said. “I got to fulfill the dream of 100 generations. Today, it’s a day-to-day fact.”
The New York Times got a new top editor, I think he’s from Britain, and perhaps he has played a role in the change of the Times attitude toward Israel.
We see today that Iraq is giving aid to Iran. The division between Shiites and Sunnis is still so great that it overrules everything else, even common sense. Too bad the U.S. didn’t know this before it involved itself in Iraq. I don’t think there’s any possibility of democracy in Iraq.
@ Wallace Brand:
Thank you, Wallace. Your article was exremely informative to me. I agree it is vewry important and should be recirculated. I will send it out to my group. THanks again.
@ David Chase:The case is not closed yet. The Government of Israel has not approved the opinion. If they don’t, and it is not likely that the Attorney General, a left winger, will do so, that just leaves the beneficiary, World Jewry, with a legal claim against their agent, the government of Israel. I suppose if the Government of Israel felt strongly enough, they could ignore the advice of their attorney whose opinion would have been largely political rather than legal.
It should be noted that the author of this article used the word “disputed” when referring to Judea and Samaria at one point. Based on San Remo, the subsequent 1922 Mandate for Palestine (see Howard Grief’s research) and the recent Levy Comission regarding the Geneva convention and the definition of what really constitutes “illegal” occupation, there is nothing disputed about it. The “dispute” is over. It belongs to the Jewish people. Case closed.M
@ Marlene Langert: I have written about a two state [temporary] solution. During this temporary period much Christian and Jewish Heritage would be lost. Remember the Quaysh, http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2012/03/remember-quraysh.html Dr. Daniel Pipes writes about how Arafat responded to Arab critics that complained about his negotiating with Jews rather than killing them. He winked and said, remember the Treaty of Hudabyah. Well those considering the two state solution should remember the Quraysh.
“From a bedroom window in his spacious, modern home here in this settlement about 20 miles northeast of Tel Aviv, Mr. Dayan — and his daughter, Ofir, 18 — can see the lights that represent those theaters, museums and restaurants. In his mind, he and his family, just by living here in the West Bank rather than yielding it to become a Palestinian state, are a “shield” protecting those theaters and museums, and the survival of Israel itself.”
We should not speak of them as “settlers” but rather as “SHOMRIM” guardians of Israel.
There is no such thing as a “two state solution”! If the so called Palestinians ever got a state, it would be a place to lauch even more attacks to “drive Israel into the sea”. THey say that all the time. Why can’t liberal jews see that. Nicey, nicey will not work with them. So, sum up your courage and stand up for jews and for Israel!
@ Ben Ze’ev:Ben, you are absolutely right. “Palestinians” is a fake term invented by the Soviet dezinformatsia because of the need to invent a “Palestinian People” so they could lay claim to Israel. Its first use was in 1964 when the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow. It appears three times in the preamble to the charter, as if to comply with the Humpty Dumpty rule “What I tell you three times is true”. Its only corroboration was by the first 422 members of the “Palestinian National Council” created at the same time; each of these was hand picked by the Soviet KGB. Read the discussion by Zahir Muhsein in his interview with the Dutch Newspaper Trouw in 1973.”“
Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation. Look, I have family members with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian citizenship. We are ONE people. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity”
A separate Palestinian entity needs to fight for the national interest in the then remaining occupied territories. The Jordanian government cannot speak for Palestinians in Israel, Lebanon or Syria. Jordan is a state with specific borders. It cannot lay claim on – for instance – Haifa or Jaffa, while I AM entitled to Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem en Beersheba. Jordan can only speak for Jordanians and the Palestinians in Jordan. The Palestinian state would be entitled to represent all Palestinians in the Arab world en elsewhere. Once we have accomplished all of our rights in all of Palestine, we shouldn’t postpone the unification of Jordan and Palestine for one second.
”
As for the “West Bank”, Steven Plaut suggests that is is likely that the dezinformatsia or the Arabs invented it too to replace Judea and Samaria, because wouldn’t they look silly if they claimed the “Jews were illegally settling in Judea.”
@ Jerry G:
They should also stop using the terms “West Bank” and “Palestinians”. I’ve even written to Caroline Glick and others about it but they still use them. Good examples of allowing enemy propaganda to become part of our being.
The Terms are of recent origin, “Palestinian” since the mid 1960s as an Arab political tool, and “West Bank” only during the illegal military occupation by Jordan between 1948 and 1967. I think they, and we, know this.
On another point I often don’t understand the modern usage of “prejudice” which word is recognised as meaning more than just a “feeling”, but a negative feeling. So would it not be more correct for Dayan to use “prejudice against” rather tha “prejudice for” .
On his major point, it seems that Dayan envisages Jews and Arabs intermingling
and interacting. I believe that for the forseeable future, it’s an ever-present danger fot Jews to be intermingling with any large body of Arabs. They hate us viscerally and irrationally, and believe we spread powder which makes their women
infertile, as well as poisoning wells and slaughtering babies. Such fantasies cannot
be overcome by normal means, likely never, at least in the next 200 years, especially considering the ages-long historical perspective Arabs always have, regarding their mythical fables and events of centuries ago, as having just recently occurred.
Any other approach is definitely not pragmatic, but well tinged with the same kind of
fantasies.
@ Jerry G:
@ Jerry G:
finally someone got it right
@ Jerry G:The author of the article, Jodi Rudoren, referred to “Samaria” as “the biblical name of part of the Western Bank. In fact it is has been the name of part of an area comprising both Judea and Samaria used by everyone until quite recently. Steven Plaut suggests that the Arabs recently renamed Judea and Samaria as “The West Bank” because “Wouldn’t they look silly in claiming that the Jews were illegally settling in Judea”.
ias a matter of fact and history
the 1922 mandate refers to jews!! it says they can close settle the land !!
however tel aviv and haifa etc are settlements and its time to stop using this silly title
and call them towns villages etc
dd
Not ‘Settlers’, ‘INHERITORS’!
Jerry G Said:
You are right. They should be called Developments and the people developers.
@ Jerry G:
I agree!!!
Why is it that the Jewish residents of Samaria/Judea are called settlers when in fact it is the Arabs who are the settlers? Arabs came from the Arabian Peninsula, hence the name Arabs, whereas Jews had a presence in this area since biblical times. Calling the Jewish residents settlers is just another method of demeaning and demonizing Jews. Certainly Jewish writers should stop using that term.