On the Hustings with Moshe Dayan

It had all the trappings of an American political campaign trip: advance men running around with clipboards; overly efficient volunteers bossing one another and everyone else around; dour Secret Service agents in double-knit suits mumbling to one another through microphones hidden up their sleeves. At the center of the hubbub, surrounded by a phalanx of plainclothesmen, was "the Man"--bald, stocky and distinguished by the world's most famous eye patch.

In reality, it was not a political tour at all, in the usual sense, but the first leg of the Moshe Dayan road show to Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Ostensibly, Israel's Foreign Minister was raising money for the United Jewish Appeal; in fact, he was mobilizing support for Israel in its latest spat with the U.S.

Dayan jetted into Chicago's O'Hare Airport aboard a chartered jet (a United Airlines 727) and was whisked off in a black Continental limousine to the nearby Hyatt Regency-O'Hare. There he addressed a hastily assembled luncheon attended by about 300 U.J.A. leaders, some from as far away as Ohio and Nebraska.

On Dayan's orders, the luncheon was closed to the press. Some reporters tried to listen through cracks in the door, but they were quickly ushered away. TIME'S Chicago bureau chief Benjamin Cate managed to slip into the Blue Max Room's projection booth, from which he heard most of Dayan's 20-minute pep rally before being spotted by an Israeli security man and shooed away. Cate reported that the Dayan behind closed doors was much more the hard-nosed warrior than the cautious diplomat. His message was clear and tough, and he had some barbs for both President Carter and Secretary of State Vance. "We are being told by Carter and Vance that if we want peace, we must accept the Arab terms--we must give up the Golan Heights, the Sinai and the West Bank. Maybe there will be peace if we do all that--but there will be no Israel. We are not going to accept this."

Then he took up the subject of the Palestinians, whom he usually referred to as "refugees," and wondered aloud why the Arabs, with all their money, "can't take care of their own." He said the idea of a Palestinian state on the West Bank was nothing less than "sowing the seeds for future destruction. We will not accept the P.L.O. We will not talk to them. We will not negotiate with them. We will not accept the American position that we talk to them. And we will go to Geneva only with the understanding that the U.S.Soviet joint statement is not binding."

The straight-from-the-shoulder talk was clearly aimed not only at U.J.A. leaders but at President Carter, whom Dayan portrayed throughout the trip as well-intentioned but naive. "I believe he is an honest man, but he may not see the eventual consequences of his plans."

After a five-minute press conference (to mollify reporters excluded from the luncheon), Dayan was off to Atlanta and Los Angeles to repeat his performance. In Atlanta, he emphasized that, lest he be accused of meddling in U.S. internal affairs, he was not going to tell American Jews what they should do. But his traveling companion, Rabbi Alexander Schindler, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, showed no such reluctance. Urging American Jews to "get vocal," he told members of the audience that they had been "very much in Carter's corner during the election" and asked them to make it clear to the President how they felt now.

The spectacle of a high-ranking foreign official on the hustings in the U.S. is not entirely without precedent. During President George Washington's Administration, for instance, the French Revolutionary Minister to the U.S., Edmond Charles Genet, tried to promote military operations against Spanish holdings on the Gulf of Mexico; he was , recalled for his trouble at the President's ' request. More recently, Britain's Ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax, made several trips around the U.S. to win support for his embattled country during World War II.

There are a few other modern parallels, and many of them have involved Israelis. Such notables as former Premier Golda Meir and former Foreign Minister Abba Eban have worked the U.S. lecture circuit for years--but rarely in so overt an effort to influence U.S. foreign policy. Yet to the conductors of the Moshe Dayan road show, it seemed a perfectly legitimate political--and diplomatic --exercise, a sort of byproduct of the special relationship that still exists between Israel and the U.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.