Professor Jonathan Rynhold is the deputy head of the Political Studies dept. at Bar-Ilan University and as a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. His book entitled The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture published by Cambridge University Press won the Israeli Association for Political Science book prize in 2016.
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.