Moshe Dayan (Hebrew: משה דיין‎, born 20 May 1915, died 16 October 1981) was an Israeli military leader and politician. The fourth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958), he became a fighting symbol to the world of the new State of Israel.

Moshe Dayan was born on Kibbutz Degania Alef near the shores of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) in pre-Mandate Palestine. His parents were Shmuel and Devorah, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He was the second child to be born on the kibbutz (after Gideon Baratz). At the age of 14, he joined the newly formed Jewish militia known as the Haganah. One of his military heroes was the British Zionist officer Orde Wingate, whom he served as second-in-command.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Dayan occupied various important positions, first as the commander of the defense in the Jordan valley; he was then given command over a number of military units on the central front. He was extremely well-liked by Israel's founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion and became his protégé, together with Shimon Peres (a future Prime Minister and President).
After the war, Dayan began to rise rapidly through the ranks. From 1955 to 1958, he was the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. In this capacity, he personally commanded the Israeli forces fighting in the Sinai during the 1956 Suez Crisis. It was during Dayan's tenure as Chief of Staff that he delivered his famous eulogy of Roi Rutenberg, a young Israeli killed in 1956.