Remorse & Victory

ISRAEL JOURNAL JUNE, 1967 and DEATH HAD TWO SONS by Yael Dayan. 113 and 191 pages. McGraw-Hill. $4.95 each.

There is more to Israeli General Moshe Dayan than meets one eye. Not only was he the "Hero of Sinai" in the 1956 war against Egypt and Defense Minister at the time of the Six-Day War last June; he is also the father of a talented daughter who at 28 looks like Joan Baez and writes like S.L.A. Marshall. These two books underscore her rising reputation: one is a novel that was going to press when the conflict broke out, the other a hasty but exhilarating campaign chronicle of Yael's experiences in the war.

Abraham's Choice. The novel is a stark tale that shows how the ghosts of the Hitler era still haunt the Promised Land. In a Polish concentration camp, Nazi guards tell Haim Kalinsky that since his two sons are so "nice," they will kill only one of them--thus forcing on him a sadistic perversion of Abraham's choice. Kalinsky selects his favorite, eleven-year-old Shmuel, to be spared, while six-year-old Daniel is led away to be slaughtered.

By war's end, Shmuel is dead, and the father later emigrates to Israel. But the Nazi camp commander has not actually killed Daniel; his aim was only to torment the father. Saved by a whim, the embittered youth also descends upon Israel. There the tensions of filial hatred and paternal remorse are unstrung against the sun-scorched background of today's Beersheba, city of patriarchs. Author Dayan's hard-bitten way with the English language raises this novel well above the sagging sentimentality of the Urises and Micheners.

Moisturizing Cream. The campaign journal is equally well done, if far more ebullient. Yael was assigned as a combat correspondent to the armored division of celebrated General Ariel ("Arik") Sharon. She records how Sharon, outmanned and outtanked,swept out of the Negev, cracked the Egyptian main line of resistance at Um-Katef, and opened the route to the Suez Canal for Israeli armor. She has a sharp sense of color. At the village of Nahel: "The sandstorm receded, and silence took over. The horn of a burning vehicle was operating--a wan sound of alarm not to die for hours--like a soft reminder of what was."

Between firefights, with her Uzi submachine gun cuddled in one hand, she was frequently taking a moment to apply a dab of "moisturizing cream" to her sunburned face or trying to comb out her tangled braids. And with good cause. Accompanying her through most of the campaign was Colonel Dov Sion, 46, an aide to Sharon. A month after war's end, the colonel and the correspondent were married.

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