EZER WEIZMAN was one of the most colourful figures in the story of modern Israel. He was a boisterous, inspirational adventurer, and his political approach was for long marked by the belief that the Jewish State’s existence depended on its military strength and its ability to defeat threats from its Arab neighbours. But during five tumultuous decades of military and political involvement he moved from being a full-blooded hawk, who favoured Jewish control of the whole of the biblical land of Israel, to being a most radical dove, envisaging a negotiated solution with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Weizman’s life as a citizen of Israel began as a pilot in the first squadron in the country’s fledgeling air force. He rose to command the air force in the period before the Six Day War of 1967, when it won its spurs in a devastatingly effective manner. After 1969 he went into politics, and over the next 30 years served in various Israeli governments, holding such portfolios as transport, defence and Arab affairs. His career, fittingly, culminated in his becoming, in 1993, seventh President of Israel, following in the footsteps of his uncle, Chaim Weizmann, who had been the first, in 1948.

Ezer Weizman was a sabra, born in 1924 in Tel Aviv. But he grew up in Haifa during the early years of the British mandate in Palestine, a member of the Jewish secular bourgeoisie. His paternal grandparents were from Central Europe. His mother’s parents were products of Palestine (or the land of Israel, as they called it) under, first, its Turkish and then its British overlords. His father was an ardent Zionist. His uncle Chaim was a pillar of the Jewish community in Britain, whose influence had been crucial in securing the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised Jews a national home in Palestine.

Yiddish, Russian, Arabic, English and Hebrew were all spoken in the Weizman home. Orde Wingate, who on a posting to Palestine embraced Zionism and led irregular Jewish troops, was a visitor. The family travelled easily around the Middle East, and the young Ezer got to know both Beirut and Damascus as well as he knew Jerusalem and Haifa.

Steeped in Zionism as he was, Weizman naturally joined Haganah, the Jewish defence movement, and took up flying in 1942 by joining the Palestine Aviation Club. The death in action of his uncle Chaim’s son, an RAF pilot, in 1942, prompted Weizman to join the RAF. Initially he was a driver delivering aviation fuel and new vehicles to British bases in the Western Desert, but in 1943 he was posted to Rhodesia for pilot training. He was one of a score of recruits from Palestine who obtained their wings in the RAF. He completed his training as a Spitfire pilot in the Sinai desert before being posted to active service in India where, in 1946, he ended his RAF service as a sergeant pilot.

Weizman went that same year to study in London; his sister, who had married an English officer, was living in Pinner. In London he was recruited into Irgun, an extremist splinter group in the campaign for a Jewish state. In his autobiography, On Eagle’s Wings (1976), Weizman disclosed that after a crash course in sabotage techniques while in England, he was assigned to assassinate a British general named Barker. The operation was aborted but not before it came to the attention of the Special Branch which, said Weizman, “advised” him to return to Palestine. He did so, but before he could embark on active service for Irgun, the rival Palmach, the military arm of Haganah, recruited him to set up an air force for the embryo state. This force consisted, initially, of half a dozen light aircraft — officially registered with the Palestine Aviation Club — in which Weizman and his fellow pilots operated surreptitiously, evacuating casualties from Jewish settlements attacked by Arabs, and themselves attacking Arab targets with the rudimentary means available to them.

A week before Israel’s independence was declared in 1948, Weizman was in a team of pilots dispatched to Czechoslovakia to bring back its first squadron of Messerschmitt 109s. During the ensuing war against the armies of the neighbouring Arab states, he participated in the new air forces’s first bombing raids against Egyptian, Iraqi and Jordanian targets, and in its first aerial combat against Egyptian Dakotas, being used as bombers.

The air force played a minor role in the first Israel-Arab war, but Weizman had his first combat victory just before the ceasefire, shooting down an RAF Spitfire, in one of five combat victories obtained when an Israeli Air Force patrol attacked an RAF formation that had strayed into the airspace of the new State, assuming it to be Egyptian.

Two years after shooting down the RAF Spitfire, Weizman spent a year at the RAF’s staff command college at Andover enjoying, during his course, a warm friendship with an Egyptian wing commander who was to become deputy commander of the Egyptian Air Force in the Six Day War.

Returning to Israel, in 1952 he was appointed a base commander and in 1956 he supervised the secret ferrying of 60 Mystère jets from France to Israel in readiness for the Sinai campaign. Although by this time a senior commander of a base, he took every opportunity to take part in operations. In 1958, in the rank of major-general, he was appointed Commander of the Israeli Air Force. During his eight years in the post he exerted himself to build up the IAF, improve its tactics and preserve its independence within the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Weizman relinquished his command in 1966 to become head of the general staff division of the IDF — in effect the deputy chief of staff — 13 months before the Six Day War. He spent that time immersing himself in the different culture of the ground forces and their commanders.

As Egypt tightened the noose around Israel in May 1967, Weizman played a significant role in preparation for an Israeli pre-emptive strike, shoring up the confidence of the nervous Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, in Israel’s measures. In On Eagles’ Wings Weizman recorded that Rabin was so demoralised by the threat facing Israel — which he regarded as his fault — that he twice offered his job to his No 2. Much though he had always coveted the top job, Weizman refused both times, pointing out that a change of chief of staff would be a grave blow to morale at that time.

Weizman earned much credit for laying the groundwork for the precision attacks on June 5 which decimated the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air forces before most of their aircraft had had time to take off. His pride in his former command, now led by Motty Hod, in their hour of victory was immense.