hospital 449.hos.003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Even being caught by the IDAM did not stop Dayan from robbing Azur again. On 14.12.1966, Brosh wrote (Azur administrative file): �I was informed by local kids that the digging is performed by Moshe Dayan...on Friday afternoons and Saturdays. By the way, this is in the same place where I once saw Dayan excavating�. On 20 March 1968 Dayan was injured by a landslide during robbing of a grave at Azur. Dayan himself wrote about it, since he was hospitalized for three weeks and the story could not be held in secret (Dayan 1976:337-342; Dayan 1978:132; Dayan Y. 1985:195-197; Teveth 1969:262-267; 1972:320-321, 356; Elon 1971:284; Dayan R. and Dedman 1973:224; Falk 1985:262-265; Amitai 1998:8; Slater 1991:304-305). It could not be kept in secret because of rare combination of circumstances. The failure of the digging at Azur happened to coincide with the failure of the IDF at the Karameh operation in Jordan; Dayan went digging on the same day, and people wondered about Dayan�s decision to go digging rather than supervising the operation. On this matter see also Amitai (1998:8).

Ido Dissentchnik knew that Dayan was injured during looting at Azur when he arrived, as a journalist, to the hospital to interview Dayan. Dissentchnik phoned Avraham Biran, head of the IDAM, and asked him: �Are you going to file a complaint against him? Biran, having heard that Dayan might be dying, retorted: Do you think that my only worry is to charge the defense minister with something like this?� (Slater 1991:305-306).

Even after this accident, Dayan returned again to Azur to see if anything is left, as he proudly tells (Dayan 1976:342; Ben-Ezer 1997:222).� In 1975, a short notice [Jerusalem Post 1975:3, author not named] appeared about a left-wing MK named Dov Zakin, who accused Dayan for carrying out illicit digs at Azur in April 1975, taking a large quantity of vessels from �a Canaanite period tomb�. He asked Aharon Yadlin, then Minister of Education responsible over the IDAM, to �probe the allegations and take steps if needed�. Yadlin, it seems, never took steps against Dayan (cf. H. Bar�am 2001:43).