Moshe Dayan and the Lessons of the Vietnam War
Dayan embraced the adventure, and for two months he roamed Western capitals and then the battlefields themselves, joining patrols and ambushes and meeting the architects and commanders of the war.
Dayan's notes, later compiled into the book "Vietnam Diary" (published in Hebrew in 1977), are a source of journalistic envy. The glorious reputation of the general who led the 1956 Sinai Campaign opened nearly every door. In London, he met Montgomery, the famed WWII commander; in Washington, he sat with Defense Secretary McNamara, the war's architect; and in Saigon, he conferred with General Westmoreland, whose name today evokes humiliating defeat, though back then he still held out hope for victory. These powerful figures hung on every word of the critique of the Israeli general, who from the outset understood the futility of the American mission.
Dayan's writing is gripping, his analysis sharp and brutal. "The dead are dead and the living live," he wrote of an American unit that suffered casualties but returned to fight, echoing exactly his laconic comment on IDF losses during a 1955 Israeli reprisal raid in Gaza. But the book's significance lies not only in history: It resonates today.
The American PR officers who touted their army's military successes to the Israeli guest sound uncannily like IDF spokespersons in the current war: enemy body counts, percentage of territory "under our control."
Dayan was unimpressed. He saw clearly: the Viet Cong would simply reoccupy any area the Americans had supposedly "cleared" the moment U.S. forces withdrew. Just like Hamas in Gaza, which reemerged with 20,000 fighters and hundreds of kilometers of tunnels after supposedly being defeated and decapitated.
Gaza may lack Vietnam's mud, but the parallels between the wars are striking. Like today's IDF commanders, American generals back then showcased an aggressive spirit, relying on overwhelming firepower and advanced technology that the enemy didn't possess, and exhibiting indifference to the "collateral damage" of the Vietnamese civilians, bombed and displaced, in the same way as the IDF high command disregards Palestinian civilian casualties in Rafah, Shuja'iyya, and Khan Yunis.
Of course, there are differences. The Americans fought far from home; the Viet Cong never attacked America or kidnapped its civilians; and unlike here, their war wasn't fueled by religious fanaticism.
Still, a year and a half into this war, it appears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and IDF chief Eyal Zamir are following the same doomed path as President Johnson, Secretary McNamara, and General Westmoreland. The prime minister no longer promises total victory, pinning his hopes instead on distant countries accepting Palestinian refugees – effectively enabling ethnic cleansing in Gaza under the guise of "voluntary migration."
Zamir portrays his predecessor Herzl Halevy as a failure and himself as the one holding the secret formula for victory – if only he's allowed to implement it. This shift lies behind the IDF's revised assessments in Gaza, flipping from claims of decisive gains to murky stagnation after the change in command. Zamir appears more casualty-averse than Halevy.
Rather than engaging in "search and destroy" ground operations, the IDF now prefers airstrikes on Hamas operatives, which concurrently inflict massive death and destruction on unprotected Palestinian civilians.
Meanwhile, like the Viet Cong, Hamas decides when and how to fight. It hides, controls the population, and builds strength, waiting for Donald Trump to impose a cease-fire and withdrawal on Netanyahu in exchange for the hostages. But if negotiations fail and the IDF prepares to reoccupy Gaza, Zamir would do well to read Dayan's "Vietnam Diary" before giving the order to "move in." He might learn something about the price of hubris and brutality.
Aluf Benn