return 662.ret.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

One eye witnesses to the robbery of Serabit el Khadem was a private soldier named Ido Dissentchik. Ido�s father was the editor of Ma�ariv, a prominent Israeli daily newspaper (Dissentchik 1981:12-13, quoted by Slater 1991:284).� By sheer chance, Ido�s unit happened to be in reserve duty in Abu Rudeis in Sinai in July 1969. The unit was ordered to provide protection for defense minister Dayan at Serabit el Khadem (misspelled in Slater 1991:284). Arriving there, they found �Dayan and his friend for archaeological matters [not named] busy on a tour. It was not a regular military tour, but an archaeological one. The pilots... took aboard the helicopter the treasured antiquities that Dayan desired�. They watched in amazement, says Ido, and on the way back one of his unit suddenly said: �We provided security for a crime. Just like in the movies: the robbers inside the bank, the covering men outside. We are accessories to a crime�.� The �simple soldiers� realized the nature of what they saw, whereas the eyes of the generals were blinded by greed. Dissentchnik (1981:12-13) continues to tell how he argued with his father, who refused to publish any of this in his newspaper, saying: �What you tell does not surprise me. No story about Moshe Dayan will surprise me. He�s capable of any bad deed. But we will not write such things about him. Moshe Dayan must be accepted as he is, with the good and the bad in him... because we need him. When D day comes, he is our hope and our savior�. In response to which Ido asked, �regardless of price�? The answer of his father was unequivocal and quite typical of the period, �there is no price for the independence and safety of a nation.�� After the 1973 war, the father admits his mistake, and remarks that he knows many more stories about Dayan, mostly about money, but he would still not publish them, because �after all these years, it will be hypocritical on my part.�

Another direct and credible eyewitness was Uri Yarom, who happened to be the helicopter pilot who carried Dayan�s looted finds. In his autobiography, Yarom (2001:170-173) tells about the �Steiner operation� in 1956- after the German word Stein (stone). Dayan is explicitly mentioned as the one responsible for this �operation�, in which he used the new military vehicle- the helicopter- to haul the heavy antiquities. Yarom landed at Abu Rudeis where, �over a picnic-lunch, the commander of the camp described our next mission: to reach to the ruins of Serabit el Khadem... and carry a load of stones of archaeological-historical value, already marked by Shmaryah Gutman, and to land them at Abu Rudeis. The booty [sic, shalal in Hebrew- R.K.] will be loaded on a Dacota plane [at Abu Rudeis], to be taken to Israel� (Yarom 1971:171).� The looting took place on 27.11.56; Yekutiel Adam and Uzi Narkis, two high-ranking officers of the IDF, were present in the helicopter. They made three rounds at least, taking an inscribed stele, a large obelisk, and �a few more pieces�. Some 20 soldiers helped to transfer the �booty� to a plane going home, in which they themselves hoped to get a lift for a leave. According to Yarom, one stele with Hathor�s face was damaged by a careless driver when loaded on a military truck. Most of the stones, writes Yarom, reached the Hebrew University collection, but at least one �found its way to the private collection of Dayan (Yarom 2001:173). A photo of an obelisk being hauled by the helicopter from the site appears in the book.

Rumors (which I could not verify) explain that when Dayan was handed the query about this in the Knesset in 1971, he did make his homework. He took the stele out of his house shortly before the scheduled date of discussion. Then he testified in the Knesset that he does not have any stele from Serabit el Kahdem in his house at the moment.� This, in his eyes, made him truthful.�

Professor Ze�ev Meshel of Tel Aviv University, in an interview made on 15.1.02, recalls that he saw stelea from Serabit el Khadem in the IDAM stores in Shlomo Hamelekh street in Jerusalem. A former IDAM worker, Shimon Nahmani, showed them wrapped in cloth inside a room closed to the public. He told Meshel that the IDAM never asked for these stelea, and that Dayan brought them suddenly in 1956 without warning. They did not know what to do with them. I have heard similar versions of this same story from other archaeologists, who asked to remain anonymous. According to them, after the peace treaty with Egypt was signed, the IDAM had to work hard in order to persuade the air force to return these very heavy antiquities to Sinai.

The case of Serabit el-Khadem demonstrates the myth cultivated by Dayan, and especially by his daughter Yael, that he never lied and did everything openly, with knowledge and even consent of Israel�s authorities, hence he was not a despised �burglar at night�. Those who advocate this myth seem to confuse two things. The style of bad deeds, that is, whether they are made in broad daylight or under cover of darkness, cannot vindicate the deeds themselves. Many details remain enigmatic. Shmaryah Gutman is well known as a capable archaeologist and excavator of Gamla in the Golan Heights, and perhaps his name was involved by mistake. Yet, many knew and participated in the looting. They also knew that Dayan�s answers in the Knesset were not truthful.