Remembering Israel’s wounded soldiers - opinion

Did you know that over 10,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded since Oct. 7, with many needing lifelong care, including an estimated 50% needing psychological counseling? We tend to focus on the number of fallen soldiers and lose sight of those who are injured.

In late August, I returned to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, the frontline tertiary care hospital closest to Gaza. When I visited at the end of 2023, 15 of the 16 beds in the ICU were filled with soldiers. As an eye surgeon from the United States, I was not used to seeing the types of wounds sustained in war. 

Because of the advancements in trauma care, and getting the most critically wounded soldiers from the battlefield to the hospital in just minutes, as is in the case of Soroka, many soldiers are alive today who never would have survived in the past. Those are blessings and challenges for Israeli society to confront in the decades to come. 

If a wounded soldier is stable enough to travel by helicopter or ambulance to one of Israel’s hospitals in the center of the country, that is where they are sent. However, if they are unstable, between life and death, they go to Soroka because it is the closest hospital to the battlefield. As a result, the medical facility receives a disproportionate number of the severely wounded.

What the staff there does is no less than God’s work. 

These are two stories of soldiers profoundly wounded earlier in the war, whose survival is no less than miraculous. 

Soroka miracles

An IDF officer with a significant traumatic brain injury, among numerous other bodily wounds, came to Soroka and was unidentifiable. The Soroka emergency care team went into action to save his life. At one point, one of the hospital staff was shocked to realize that this person was their friend and colleague from the ICU, Dr. Yoav Bichovsky, one of the elite intensive care physicians who left the ICU two weeks before to go to Gaza.

The first ethical dilemma is whether people who are so close to the patient should be the ones treating him. Moral dilemmas are part of the daily challenges in the ICU. To remind the staff to see the patient not as a number but as a person, pictures are hung around the room of what the patient looked like and what they enjoyed before their injury. This protocol is done to remind them of the patient’s humanity. 

The head of the ICU, Dr. Moti Klein, said: “I know that man [Bichovsky] personally, and there is nowhere he would want to be taken care of except at his hospital.” He added that the brain injury he sustained should have been a death blow, as a bullet entered his brain on one side of his head and exited on the other. Remarkably, he was stabilized, and after several months he was sent to one of Israel’s leading rehabilitation centers. 

In the innovative Israeli mind, they realized his rehabilitation would be helped if they could have him perform some of his previous medical tasks in the intensive care unit. So, a model that medical students practice on was sent to the rehab center to reenact intubations and other techniques during his recovery. How brilliant! 

As I walked from the ICU with my friend Dr. Erez Tsumi, the department chair of ophthalmology, we stopped by the Soroka rehabilitation clinic. There, I watched a man on a gravity-free treadmill; it was the wounded physician. Without stopping his exercise, he greeted me with a warm smile, extended his wounded right hand to shake, and spoke to me in a raspy voice due to one paralyzed vocal cord.

I learned that this man, who should not have survived, was thriving. Most of his skills and memories have returned, and he retains his ability to speak several languages. He will be returning to work in the ICU in a few months!

ICU encounters

On my visit to Soroka last year, I met a young man in the ICU, unconscious with a traumatic brain injury. He was paralyzed on one side, blind in one eye, with the other eye filled with shrapnel. I met his father, who hugged Tsumi, who was taking care of his severe eye injuries. And when I thought my heart could not sink any lower, I met his girlfriend.

Eight months later, the soldier is home, his girlfriend is still at his side, and my friend, Tsumi, who operated on his remaining eye, has restored his vision to 20/20. The young man has a long way to go. Still, the patient and his family’s appreciation for saving his life and sight, and restoring a significant quality of his life, brings smiles to Tsumi and Klein every Shabbat eve when the young man’s mother sends them pictures of the family, happy and grateful.

Beyond the donations to hospitals and rehabilitation centers for physical disabilities and mental (PTSD) health traumas, which will undoubtedly be required, another need may be more challenging.

Before the Israel-Hamas war, the country did not have nearly enough doctors, nurses, physical therapists, psychologists, and other healthcare workers. The need now will be significantly higher. Many of these soldiers will need care for a lifetime. Even the number of accessible parking spaces will have to be vastly increased.

It is hard to plan for the future in the fog of war. However, Israel will have to address this significant challenge, caring for all its men and women, and the concentric circles of psychologically injured families and friends. With no end in sight of this ongoing war, and the continued traumatic stress, they cannot even begin the process of psychological recovery. 

The resilience of the Israeli people – the soldiers and officers I meet in the field, healthcare workers, people in their 40s and 50s who have left their jobs for over ten months to remain with their reserve units on the frontlines – is something Americans cannot fathom. There are many soldiers who have already returned to their units – some with one less limb, others with healed second- and third-degree burns and six-inch scars across their foreheads. I have only awe and respect.

One reason I go to places like Soroka is to remind myself of the price war takes on a people and a nation. As a writer and analyst focusing on defense and security, it is easy to lose sight of the human tragedy of war. It should be a constant reminder to those deciding to send their young citizens into harm’s way.

For Israelis, there is no choice when dealing with religious zealots who glorify the death of their own children and cherish the death of Jews. What Israelis face in physical threats and economic challenges would overwhelm almost all Americans, yet there is an unspoken meaning to their complicated lives and a purpose beyond themselves.

Remember Israel’s often-forgotten wounded, who put themselves in harm’s way not only for their country but are on the frontlines for Western civilization.

The writer is the director of the Middle East Political Network and the senior security editor for The Jerusalem Report. He has been briefing members of Congress and their foreign policy aides for over 25 years.