MK Ayman Odeh is head of the Joint List, the third largest parliamentary group in the 20th Knesset, and chairs the Lobby for Culture in the Knesset. He is a member of the House Committee and the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee. Since 2015, Odeh has been member of the board of directors of the Mahmoud Darwish Foundation.
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.