General Moshe Dayan, former chief of staff of Israel and now a member of Israel’s Parliament from the Rafi Party, will fly tomorrow to Saigon, after concluding talks with top officials and army officers on the Viet Nam war. Gen. Dayan spent a few days in Washington collecting material for a series of articles which he intends to write after his return to Israel. At a private dinner in his honor, he met Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
In an interview today Gen. Dayan said: “In Tel Aviv, there were pickets outside my house carrying placards saying I shouldn’t go. The Communists tried to push through a resolution in the Knesset (Parliament) condemning my trip, and the Foreign Minister disclaimed any Government connection with it. Some critics thought that by going to Saigon I would be identifying Israel with the American presence there.”
On his Viet Nam mission the Israeli general had this to say: “I have really two main reasons for going. One is a military one and the other is people. I want to see the relationship between the South Vietnamese military and the people. If you are going to provide security for people in a guerrilla war, you must have the confidence of the people in the soldiers. If they trust you, you can achieve something.”
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.
