ONE of Israel’s most beloved and respected novelists, David Grossman, was awoken at 2.40am last Sunday by someone ringing his doorbell. There was no need to explain to an Israeli the meaning of such a disturbance at that time of night.

“They said on the intercom that they were from the army,” recalled Grossman, 52, last week. “I went downstairs to open the door and thought, ‘That’s it. Life is over’.”

On the doorstep his worst fears were confirmed: “Mr Grossman. Your son Uri was killed in action. We’re sorry.”

This news, devastating for Grossman and his wife Michal, arrived just as a ceasefire was about to come into effect. To lose a child in Lebanon was tragedy enough. But for this to be one of the very last casualties of the war seemed a particularly cruel stroke of fate.

In any case, the death of Uri, a 20-year-old tank commander who was buried in Jerusalem on Tuesday, has fuelled his family’s fury against a government already reeling from charges of incompetence in its handling of the war.

There are calls for a judicial investigation into what happened amid claims of poor preparation and erratic tactics. Judgments made by the chief of staff Dan Halutz, the defence minister Amir Peretz and the prime minister Ehud Olmert are coming under growing criticism.

Even Grossman, who is well known in Israel as a peace activist, initially supported the government’s goal of an all-out strike against Hezbollah, a group committed to wiping the country off the map.

What has come to bother him and countless other Israelis is the amount of time it took to achieve so little. Despite five weeks under Israeli attack from land, sea and air, Hezbollah was able to fire a record 246 rockets at Israel’s northern cities on the final day.

Only two days before the death of his son, Grossman and two other well-known novelists had publicly urged the government to end the war. “The killing must stop,” he had told a left-wing rally in Tel Aviv.

His other children, Ruthi and Yehonatan, share his politics as well as his red hair, just as Uri did. Sitting in the family’s back garden last week, Yehonatan, 24, could barely conceal his anger with the government.

He said Uri, who had been planning to travel abroad after his army service and then study theatre, had been sent on “a suicide mission”.

“They stood no chance against the advanced (Russian-made) Kornet anti-tank missiles,” said Yehonatan, who is also in a tank regiment. Israel had begged the Russians not to sell these weapons to Syria, warning that they would be passed on to Hezbollah. The Kornets accounted for 17 Israeli tanks destroyed in the fighting.

The small, stone Grossman house in a well-to-do suburb of Jerusalem was filled with friends paying their last respects to Uri. Grossman, looking thin and fragile, chatted quietly with his guests. All around the room were books, some of them foreign translations of Grossman’s novels.

Grossman had written one of them, a children’s book called Uri’s Special Language, nearly two decades ago. “Uri is almost two years old, and he’s beginning to talk,” it began. “Even Uri’s parents don’t understand what Uri is saying.”

A shy young soldier walked hesitantly into the room. Grossman stood up to greet him. He had been the first soldier to reach the charred remains of Uri’s Merkava Mark 4 tank, one of the world’s most advanced.

“Did you see him?” Grossman asked gently. The soldier nodded his head.

“Was he wounded?” asked the father. The soldier mumbled a shy “no”.

“Was he badly injured?” “No.”

“Was he dead?” “Yes,” whispered the soldier.

Elsewhere, grieving Israeli families were furious for different reasons. The Meshulamis, a family of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank, believed the army should have been given another week or two to try to finish off Hezbollah.

Two of the family’s 17 children had fought in Lebanon. One was Amasah, killed in his tank a few hours before Uri Grossman died. “His tank was blown up and burnt by a Hezbollah rocket,” said Yehudah, his brother. That is not the end of the suffering. In three weeks Amasah’s wife will give birth. The child will be fatherless.

The government has argued that the conflict has left Israel more secure. It says that Israel has killed more than 500 Hezbollah fighters, reduced the threat of future attacks and secured the international community’s renewed determination to see the group disarmed.

On Thursday, however, the first anti-government demonstration by Israeli reservists took place in Tel Aviv. “We want to know what were the aims of this war,” said a protester, “why we didn’t finish it with a decisive victory.”

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