Michael Winship: Every Day a Little Death | BuzzFlash: "(David)Grossman is a devoted Zionist. Like virtually all his countrymen, he has served in the Israeli military, as have his two sons. 'We doom ourselves to this vicious circle, that our children will kill their children and vice versa,' he told Bill. 'And we are stuck in this hermetic bubble of animosity. And there is wonderful justification for each side to justify what he does or inflict on the other side.

'But in the meantime, we are all being suffocated in this hermetic bubble. And I want to start to breathe. I just want to start to breathe the air that we should breathe, the air that we deserve to breathe.'

Two weeks ago, I opened the paper to the news that Grossman's youngest son, Uri, an Israeli tank commander, had been killed in Lebanon, two weeks shy of his 21st birthday.

'He was a man of values,' David Grossman said of his child at the funeral. 'In recent years, that word has faded. It has even been ridiculed. Because in our disjointed, cruel, cynical world, it's not cool to have values. Or to be a humanist. Or to be really sensitive to the distress of others, even if the other is your enemy on the battlefield...

'May we know how to be a bit more gentle with each other, and may we succeed in saving ourselves from the violence and hostility that has penetrated so deeply into all aspects of our lives. May we know how to get our bearings and save ourselves now, at the very last minute, because very hard times await us.'"