I go online on Twitter and I see that a neo-Nazi Twitter account with 125,000 followers,

posted my picture and my name and the email for the dean's office, my immediate employer.

125,000 people. 10 minutes later, the dean and

a vice dean came into my office being like, what the fuck is happening? Why are thousands of people

emailing us to get rid of you? And I said, I don't know. Do you think I want to be on a neo-Nazi website? This is horrible.

This ruined my life. But it also made my life the most meaningful it's ever been.

Hey, listeners, it's Mishi. So as you know, we're continuing our series of wartime diaries,

which is our attempt to collect slivers of life

during these difficult days.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia

University, became an unlikely public defender of Israel.

I say unlikely because Shai never really thought

he'd find himself in such a role. See, he grew up in Israel, served as a medic in the Navy,

and went to the Hebrew University. But as a committed left-winger, he was usually critical

of the Israeli government, and often took to the streets to demonstrate

against its policies. Still, the atmosphere he witnessed on college campuses, and specifically

on his own campus at Columbia, during the early days of the war, pushed him to speak up and speak

out.

In his very first collaboration with Israel's story, Mir Gorali, one of Israel's most celebrated podcasters, got on a transatlantic call with Shai to talk about that experience.

Here's Shai.

How many followers I have on Twitter?

So on October 6, I had about 900 followers on Twitter

...