Jonathan Schneer is the author of The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict which won a 2010 National Jewish Book Award. He is a professor in the School of History and Sociology at the Ivan Allen School of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech.
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.