Séamas O'Reilly: Once proud defenders of Israel are beginning to backtrack — why now?

It’s a war crime and it’s been going on for almost the entirety of the conflict. So what has changed in the past few weeks?

Seamas O'Reilly: If we are witnessing some small sea change, we are within our rights to ponder how it has come about. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

You may have noticed it recently. Once proud defenders of Israel’s war on Gaza beginning to backtrack a little. A column here, a radio segment there. A sense that sensible, moderate opinion has shifted slightly in every direction you care to look. 

A dozen or more articles in Britain’s broadsheet press, statements from its foreign secretary David Lammy, and Tory MP Mark Pritchard, all expressing their strongest criticism yet of Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people. These, alongside increasingly assertive mentions from both French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, the latter the most public break from Israel by a German leader in many years.