Yair Hirschfeld is the Isaac and Mildred Brochstein Fellow in Middle East Peace and Security in Honor of Yitzhak Rabin at the Baker Institute. Hirschfeld is currently teaching at the University of Haifa in the Department of Middle Eastern History. Hirschfeld was a member of the Israeli team that prepared the first Israeli-Palestinian blueprint for the Permanent Status Agreement. He is also the director general of the Tel Aviv-based Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF).
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.