TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2005
Ezer Weizman, the swashbuckling and acerbic former president of Israel, who built the country's air force and guided it in the startlingly swift victory over the Arab forces in the 1967 war, died Sunday night, the government said. He was 80 and suffered recently from pneumonia.
Weizman made his name as one of Israel's most celebrated fighting men, yet he worked to transform himself into a dovish politician. He was instrumental in the 1978 peace negotiations with Egypt that led to Israel's withdrawal from the territory he helped capture a decade earlier.
His eventful life paralleled that of the country he served for more than half a century. A fighter pilot with Britain's Royal Air Force during World War II, Weizman created Israel's air force in the war at Israel's founding in 1948.
He became an acclaimed military strategist, a forceful cabinet minister and a leading figure in both of the country's major political parties.
"He represented everything mythic and heroic about Israeli society," said Michael Oren, author of the best-selling book "Six Days of War," about the 1967 conflict. "He also represented everything chauvinistic and impolitic about Israeli society."
His career was capped by two terms as the country's president, a largely ceremonial post.
Weizman was an Ashkenazi Middle Easterner who spoke fluent Hebrew and English, along with a smattering of Arabic and enough Yiddish to swear. He could be caustic in any language.
Although he was the second president produced by his family - his uncle Chaim Weizmann was Israel's first president - he took pride in his common touch as a plain-spoken, native-born Israeli.
Weizman played major roles in two of the most dramatic episodes in Israel's history: the 1967 war, when he led the air force he had personally built to a stunning pre-emptive victory, and the Camp David peace talks of 1978, when his unexpected rapport with President Anwar Sadat proved critical to forging peace with Egypt.Weizman was not the only Israeli military leader to evolve from fierce hawk to ardent peace advocate. But few made that transition so rapidly and dramatically.
His military service in World War II, which included duty in Egypt, Libya and India, marked him as a brash and aggressive risk-taker.
In 1946, before independence, he joined the Haganah insurgents and helped organize the first embryonic version of the Israeli Air Force: a fleet of nine Piper Cubs used for supply and reconnaissance missions in the Negev Desert.With one of a few rehabilitated Messerschmitt fighters acquired later, he flew the first sorties in the 1948 war of independence.
After independence he helped organize the air force into a formidable corps, and its performance in the 1967 war made him a national hero.
As the first defense minister for the new Likud government, Weizman reiterated his opposition to territorial concessions. But after his role in the 1978 Camp David negotiations, Weizman's advocacy of peace talks periodically made him the center of controversy.
A man of action, Weizman seemed ill-suited for the presidency, largely a ceremonial post that seemed to require a diplomat; Weizman rarely, if ever, censored his sharp tongue, irreverently skewering opponents and allies alike. |
