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‘Four Mothers’: The Womb in the Public Sphere 131

women too will be invited to join the parade of speakers. (Am-Ad,
Ha’Kibbutz, 27 November 1997)

While this report criticizes the silencing of the women, the journalists themselves
add to it through lengthy descriptions of the content of the men’s speeches, and
only stating that the spokeswoman for the movement ‘spoke’, with no reference
to the content of her speech. Similarly, a different article suggests that the women
initiated a debate, but the detailed explanations for withdrawal from Lebanon
were reported based on the words of a male politician present at the meeting and
not from the women’s debate (Gavish, northern local paper, May 1997).
Not only were women described in terms of the voice of inexperience and
irrelevant emotion, but attention was devoted to some of those who blamed
them for betraying the national ethos by demoralizing the military and causing
actual damage. A right-wing female Knesset member is quoted as saying:

The legitimacy of this case seems to me completely out of place. I don’t think
these women should have a monopoly or copyright over the opinions of
dozen of thousands of soldiers, and speak in their name. Even if they had
asked their own children, it is reasonable to assume that they would have
a different opinion. I think it is very illegitimate these days to sow
demoralization among soldiers when they are doing their job faithfully.
(Shneid, Ma’ariv, n.d.)

Similarly, another right-wing political leader argued: ‘All these calls for
withdrawal from Lebanon cause unimagined damage. They hurt our deterrence
abilities and they have no grounding in reality. It causes the terrorists to think
that they can defeat us by putting pressure on us’ (Rapapport, Yediot Acharonot,
7 April 1998). ‘They are dancing over [the spilled] blood’, ‘They are the
Hizbollah’s agents’, accused others (Ringel-Hoofman, Ma’ariv, 27 March 1998).
The Four Mothers’ political challenge is thus perceived as a betrayal of the
national ethos of strength and determination against all enemies, and treachery
to national goals. As is often the case with protest movement (van Zoonen, 1996),
the public discourse feeds back into the movement’s self-perception and serves
to cultivate their own identity. One of the activists shared her internal conflict on
the issue of causing damage:

I, for one, when joining the movement at the beginning, I did it in secrecy,
so the children wouldn’t know, because I didn’t know what their reaction
would be. At a certain point I was also afraid that maybe our activity here
could affect events somehow, that maybe the Hizbollah ... I thought
maybe the Hizbollah want us out of there, and I thought that if they see
that there is pressure here, they would attack even more forcefully so we
would get out of there. So I said to myself that I am really endanger-
ing the soldiers. On the other hand, later I started understanding ... you
need to believe that what you are doing is right. (Horovitz, interview,
10 November 1998)