My family and I had one of the moving experiences of our lives when we went to Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv to visit the wounded soldiers of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

We gave each soldier two small gifts, one for them and one for their mothers who invariably sleep in their rooms to nurse them back to health. The soldiers are all incredibly young. Most were about nineteen with the oldest we met being 22. There were soldiers who had lost their legs. There were soldiers who had lost fingers and hands. And there was a soldier who had been shot in the head and lost both an ear and an eye.

To a man, they were upbeat, positive, and bereft of any self-pity. They each told us that their wounds were the price one pays to live in Israel. It’s the eternal story of the Jewish people. Survival itself exacts a price. They couldn’t stop thanking me and my family for visiting. Which just embarrassed us. They were thanking us? They had lost limbs and nearly died. There is a global eruption of anti-Semitism and the Jewish state is under siege. And through it all we were in the safety and comforts of the United States.

Yet they were thanking us for giving them trinkets.

But there is one battle that I have participated in – that every Jew has a responsibility to join – and it’s the PR battle for Israel’s good name.