Tamara Berens is an undergraduate student at King’s College London, where she was President of the Israel Society in 2017/18. She is also a Campus Associate with CAMERA on Campus. The views articulated in her responses are not in representation of the organisations she is associated with.
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.