The disclosure that Moshe Dayan came under armed attack three times at the start of the Sinai campaign of 1956, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the campaign, was made today by Bamachaneh, the Israel Army weekly.
Mr. Dayan, Minister of Agriculture in the present caretaker government and then Chief of Staff, was waiting on the outskirts of Al Arish during its occupation by Israeli units when the first attack occurred, according to the story by his aide in the weekly. The Chief of Staff and his party were the targets of bursts of machine gun fire which killed Mr. Dayan’s driver but did not hit the Chief of Staff.
Two days later, the Chief of Staff was en route to Tel Aviv from a meeting in Jerusalem with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion when his car was attacked late at night by Egyptian commandoes, who apparently had no knowledge of who was in the car. The driver kept the car going through a burst of hand grenades.
Several miles away, the car was attacked by automatic fire. The bullets damaged the car and blew out its tires but the driver stepped on the throttle and kept the car moving. When the car was finally forced to stop, the occupants took shelter in a ditch near the road. At that point, the Chief of Staff decided to attack the commandoes but apparently they fled as soon as the car came to a halt.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
