Last week the British government banned imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the foreign secretary told Parliament that London should have moved sooner.Eleven other countries signaled they would follow. In response, Israel barred a group of British lawmakers and ordered the U.K.
consulate in east Jerusalem closed.You can argue that policy either way, and people will do that for months.Let me be honest about my own reaction.
I was not surprised.Not by Britain.Not by the countries lining up behind it.
Not by the language that arrived with it.I have spent enough time in this line of work to know when the mood turns, it turns in many places at once.
It has turned in London and Paris and Sydney.It has turned on American campuses and in American arenas.
It has turned in the comment sections under stories about my organization that have nothing to do with politics at all, stories about a man learning to walk again.BRITAIN’S DRAMATIC CRACKDOWN ON ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS SPARKS FIERCE RESPONSE AS US BLOWBACK LOOMSA young soldier is evacuated to hospital after being injured in Gaza.(Nir Keidar/Anadolu via Getty Images)So I am not going to spend this column cataloging the hate.
Others do that work well.I want to tell you what I deal with instead, because it is the better story and it is the more important one.Here is my week.There are more than 90,000 IDF disabled veterans, creating the largest rehabilitation effort in Israel's history.
Since Oct.7 and through "Swords of Iron," the number of wounded warriors has grown faster than at any point since 1948, and they are younger than any generation before them. Most were called up as reservists and were wounded while serving in the reserves — they had a business to run, a thesis to finish a baby at home.Now many carry a psychological injury alongside the physical one — which means nobody in the parking lot can see it at all.A 24-year-old who loses a leg is not just facing a hard year.
He is facing six...