Yael Dayan

Yael Dayan was born in 1939 in Nahalal

Yael Dayan was born in 1939 in Nahalal, the daughter of Moshe Dayan and Ruth Dayan and the granddaughter of Shmuel Dayan. She was the older sister of Ehud and Assi Dayan. She attended Tichon Hadash high school in Tel Aviv.

She served in the IDF as a captain in the Spokesperson's Unit. She then studied international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and biology at the Open University.

She wrote columns for papers such as Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv and Davar, and published novels and a diary of the Six-Day War. From 1959 to 1967 she lived in Greece with director Michael Cacoyannis. She later married Dov Sion, and they had 2 children.

She was active in peace groups and campaigned for women's rights and LGBT rights. Elected to the Knesset in 1992, she chaired the Committee on the Status of Women and advanced the 1998 sexual harassment law. In 2003 she left Labor with Yossi Beilin and was not reelected.

She became deputy mayor of Tel Aviv under Ron Huldai and later chaired the city council from 2008 to 2013, the first woman in that role. She left politics in 2013 and died in 2024 of lung disease.