Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He was a visiting professor of Israel Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 2013. His latest book, “Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation,” (2013) won the Jewish Book Council’s Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award.
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.