John Lyndon is executive director of OneVoice Europe, former board member of Chatham House’s Under 35’s Steering Committee and a visiting fellow at King’s College London. Joel Braunold is executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace and contributor to Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. Joel has been working at the intersection of civil society and geopolitics for the past six years, and he works regularly with the US State Department, USAID and the National Security Council on the needs of the peace building community.
Our Voice of the Fortnight is from the Times of Israel's 'Wartime Diaries' podcast. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Shai Davidai – an Assistant Professor at Columbia University – became an unlikely public defender of Israel. And truthfully, even he was surprised by this turn of events: As a committed left-wing Israeli, he had spent years criticizing the government, and often took to the streets to demonstrate against its policies. But the atmosphere he witnessed on college campuses (and specifically on his own campus at Columbia), compelled him to speak up and speak out.