The response to the book was overwhelming. I wrote it as a private story, but it became a public document, four editions were published, dozens of articles were written about it. The The "Baufort family" became one of the symbols of protest against the Lebanon war. It brought into the public discourse a new, clear and strong voice, the voice of the parents. In the course of the 90s, the voice of the parents - most of all, bereaved parents - has grown louder. Some of them set up leftwinged movements, calling for withdrawal from Lebanon, such as parents against Silence or Four Mothers. On the right, families of terror victims demonstrated against the peace process with the Palestinians. But not all who lost children to terror took that position; Yitzhak Frankental, for instance, became a prominent peace activist.

The parents of the absent soldiers missing in action since the Sultan Yakub battle in the Lebanon War have led a worldwide campaign to find their sons. The parents of Nachshon Waxman who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists near Jerusalem became public figures. Parents of soldiers who were killed in training accidents have fought for open and objective inquiries, rejecting the old approach that the army investigates itself. In December a soldier was killed by "friendly fire" by his own platoon in Lebanon. Both his parents and tose of the commander allegedly the responsible appeared immediately in the media, protesting and accusing the army. The top brass is very uncomfortable with the phenomenon. Erez Gershtein, a top commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon, has accused Four Mothers of hurting morale. Politicians support or oppose parental militancy as fit their goals.

The protest of the bereaved points to the decline of an old Israeli myth; that the state and top commanders always know always what they are doing. That they don't make mistakes, and if they do, they have the proper procedures to deal with them. The parents' protest reveals mistrust, suspicion, reduce respect for the military and for the government's defense policy.

It is instructive to compare this trend with two other protest movements. The Anti-Vietnam War movement in the U.S. sometimes seems to be an inspiration for efforts to get Israel out of Lebanon. But there is a big difference. in America, the generation of young people who were being sent to Vietnam, and didn't want to fight at all created the movemnt. In Israel, the young people who must fight don't object to serve in the army; and if they oppose going to Lebanon, as soldiers they are not free to speak out. Their parents speak for them.

The Yom Kippur War provides an example closer to home. Thousands of soldiers were killed. My brother was one of them. My mother was full of anger, aimed at Prime Minister Golda Meir, who she believed didn't try the way of peace that could have prevented the war. But neither she nor any other parents spoke out. The wave of protest came from the soldiers who survived, and felt they have the moral right to call their leaders to shoulder responsibility for their mistakes.

What has changed, what has turned the pain and anger of bereaved parents into a public force? I ask myself the opposite question - why did the families wait so long? Why was my mother so silent? Why was I? We were still caught in collective myth that the country's leaders and military commanders should be trusted. We didn't allow ourselves to protest, because that would contradict deeply held but false beliefs. We didn't use the power we gained with pain and tears.

We, the bereaved families, bare the Israeli fate. Our private tragedy gives us the moral right to speak, and force anybody else to listen. We didn't use it after the Yom Kippur war. It took another bloody and unnecessary war to push the parents into the public arena. The main criticism of parents' presence protest is that it "weakens" the army and the country. That argument is wrong. What weakens Israel are unnecessary wars like the one in Lebanon, or wars you have no chance of winning like the attempt to stop the Intifada. Throughout history, wars lasted because the soldiers were dehumanized, became instruments, pawns. The Israeli parents' message is that their sons are not instruments but human beings, whose lives are as precious as the lives of the civilians. The first moral rule, universal and Jewish, is that life and humanity are more important than abstract values, ideologies, religious beliefs or political interests. The bereaved parents today are the prophets of that truth.

Ruvik Rosenthal is the op-ed editor of the daily Ma'ariv and editor of the cultural quarterly Panim originally Published in Jerusalem Report, February 1, 1999

Sent in with Rosenthal's permission, by Yehoshua Zamir. See his "Survival is not Enough" web site