Joel Singer is the former Legal Adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry under the Rabin-Peres Government. He negotiated the Israel-PLO Mutual Recognition Agreement, the Oslo Agreement and its implementing agreements with the PLO (1993-96). Singer was also a principal author of the Israeli autonomy model developed pursuant to the 1978 Camp David Accords and was a member of the Israeli delegation to the Autonomy Talks with Egypt and the United States under the Begin Government (1979-1982).
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.