Moshe Dayan, former foreign Minister of Israel, said here last night he believed a military option is necessary to resolve the situation in Iran where Moslem students are continuing to hold 60 American hostages at the American Embassy in Teheran. He expressed hope that Egypt would cooperate with Israel should the U.S. ask to use the Sinai airfields to exercise a military option.
Dayan was addressing a meeting of some 600 United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies Joint Campaign volunteers at the Jewish Center on Manhattan’s West Side. It was his first address in this country since resigning as Foreign Minister last month and his first appearance in a tour of American Jewish communities sponsored by the national UJA.
In discussing a possible military option, Dayan stressed: “I am not volunteering advice (on the hostage situation in Teheran). You have good generals, you have your Administration, they know what they are doing. “He noted, however, that knowing the Middle East as he does, “I am afraid that you have to have a military option, when and if necessary.” He added: “I don’t mean you have to use military force to remove the hostages.”
Dayan said some situations require a military solution. He cried the operation Israel carried out at Entebbe Airport in Uganda in July, 1976 to rescue some 100 passengers on a plane that had been hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
The former Israeli Minister declared that the holding of innocent civilians as hostages “really did not start now” but “with the hijacking of airplanes by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and the world has been compromising with that for 15 years.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
