David Harris spent more than three decades leading the American Jewish Committee, where he navigated crises facing the Jewish community and built bipartisan coalitions to advance the group’s mission of supporting Israel and Diaspora Jewry.  

His book, Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press last year, is Harris’ attempt to reach beyond the Jewish community — churches, classrooms and the “average New York Times reader.” His goal, he said, is to turn the “silent majority” into the “loud majority.”

Written in the shadow of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel, the book arrived at a moment of surging antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world. It traces antisemitism from its ancient roots through the Holocaust, the Soviet era and its recent resurgence — the explosion on college campuses and beyond after Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

Harris, who quipped that he retired “for about 30 seconds” after serving as AJC’s CEO from 1990–2022, sat down with Jewish Insider on Thursday to discuss the book at a moment in which he said he has “never been more worried” about antisemitism — yet also remains optimistic about the Jewish future.  

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jewish Insider: Oxford University Press called you about writing this book in the fall of 2023 — weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks. You write that you were “honored but distressed by the need for such a book.” How much did the aftermath of the attacks reshape the book you thought you were going to write?

David Harris: That call was not directly related to Oct. 7, it was too close to the attacks to even have associated [the rise of] antisemitism with it. Antisemitism was surging [already] in general. They needed a book that would be easily accessible to a high number of people, to be able to reach the average New York Times reader. It was also meant for high school and college classrooms and churches. They understood the emerging problem and this was their contribution.

I wrote the book over the span of close to two years during the post-Oct. 7 period. Two things impacted me: the speed and virulence of which history was turned on its head. The worst day in Israeli and Jewish history since the end of World War II had before our eyes suddenly become directed at Jews, Zionists [and] friends of Israel who were suddenly seen as the perpetrators. Even with my understanding of the subject matter, I was stunned by how quickly and viciously it turned.

Number two is that I kept needing to add to the book because every day brought new events, insights and tragedies. At a certain point the publishers had to remind me this wasn’t a newspaper, we have to close the book at some point. There’s already room for a sequel, unfortunately. 

JI: How are you reaching a wider, non-Jewish audience? Does the average American want to read about antisemitism? What has been their reaction to the book? 

DH: Because Oxford University Press [is a major publisher], it’s not so easy for people who are otherwise ready to go after a book on antisemitism, such as the one that I wrote, to discredit or marginalize it with accusations like “Harris is a Zionist.” The publisher’s label is enormously important for the book’s credibility and reach. 

Jews are also an important part of the audience. I learned from writing the book. Others can learn from reading the book.

I wrote this book with the hope that I’d be able to speak to non-Jewish audiences as well. So when one of the largest Methodist churches in the U.S., in Kansas City, with more than 30,000 worshippers a week, invited me to come speak, I was in my happy place. They invited me to come and could not have been more gracious. The response was very good. There was also a large gathering of interfaith leaders while I was in Kansas City. I want to reach well beyond the Jewish community because antisemitism is not a Jewish problem that can be solved by Jews.  We need to engage good people, the silent majority, and help turn them into the loud majority.  

It seems to me the larger goal, and this book is only a part of it, is to reach and mobilize the heart of America to understand the situation and the implications not just for Jews but for liberal values for all of us. It may begin with Jews, it never ends with Jews. The people burning the American flag are the very same people trampling on the Israeli flag and threatening Jews. 

JI: Where do you see the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism — and has that line shifted since Oct. 7?

DH: For me, the line has not shifted. It’s just been more revealed. In the book I quote Natan Sharansky, one of my heroes, who wrote a number of years ago there’s “three Ds” to answer that question. When criticism of Israel evolves into delegitimization of Israel, demonizing of Israel and the use of double standards, it’s clear people cannot hide behind their defense of just being critical. 

It’s a more elegantly linguistic way of being antisemitic while claiming you’re only anti-Zionist. 

JI: The book documents the near-total disappearance of 850,000 Jews from Muslim-majority countries since 1948. Why does that history get so little mainstream attention, and why does it matter now?

DH: It’s a question I know all too well because I’m married to one of those 850,000 Jews and have been for 51 years. I’ve seen this issue play out through my wife’s experience post-expulsion from Libya in 1967 and I’ve seen it play out in my global diplomacy where every time I raise this issue I’m usually met by an eye roll — a complete lack of interest. 

One reason is the Palestinians have done an exceptionally good job of making the world believe they are the perpetual refugees and have elevated victimhood to a whole new level. Those 850,000 Jews really determined from the get-go that they were not going to create lifelong victimhood, they were going to build new lives. And they did very successfully, so they didn’t become professional storytellers of their plight and loss. 

But my wife says they are triple victims. First, they were expelled or forced to flee their country, their ancestral homeland. Two, the world looked away. Three, there is no trace of a 2,000-plus year history of the Jewish presence in Libyan history today. There is nothing, they’ve been completely wiped out. With the exception of Morocoo, that is true for most of these countries which these refugees had to flee.   

JI: There’s a chapter detailing the campus antisemitism surge. Jewish groups told Jewish Insider two months after the Oct. 7 attacks that they were taking an engage-and-influence approach with diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks that have been used to exclude Jews from protected minority status on some campuses, which some attribute to the rise in antisemitism. Then in 2024, the same groups said they were reassessing their embrace of DEI. What is your approach? Is DEI fixable? 

DH: For many years Jewish organizations relied on one weapon with campuses, so to speak. That was called reason, sitting down with the president or provost and reasoning with them to help them understand why antisemitism is unacceptable. Clearly, after Oct. 7 that dependence on reason was proven to be totally ineffective in most places. 

What instead is more effective is taking the gloves off — lawfare. I particularly applaud the students at Harvard, Penn, George Washington University and other schools who took the lead here. While sitting on campuses, they were suing those campuses for violation of their rights. The organizations that got behind the students, groups like the Lawfare Project and Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and law firms that have stepped up pro bono, all deserve huge credit.  

I retired for about 30 seconds after I stepped down from my position at AJC. I joined the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy because I thought they were really onto something regarding campuses that no one else that I knew was looking at carefully, long before Oct. 7, and that was foreign funding — where was it coming from? What was its intent? Why were universities in many cases violating American law by not reporting those gifts? Today it’s part of the national discourse to follow the money. These ecosystems directly and indirectly penetrated campuses at many levels, student organizations, faculty and staff, liberal arts, social sciences, Middle East study centers. They penetrated over many years in a very systematic and focused way. 

The combination of deep research and the ability to get the research into policymakers, in the university world and the political world together with lawfare are the strategies that I think are most effective. 

The students on campus are the frontline warriors of the Jewish people. They deserve the absolute backing of the American Jewish community.  

JI: You led AJC for more than 30 years — you’ve seen Jewish organizational leadership up close across decades of crises. How do you assess how today’s Jewish leaders have responded to the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism, and what would you tell them to do differently? 

DH: Our community is several steps behind where it should be. We are at war. It’s a war designed to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Israel. It has fueled antisemitism and in many cases attacked and isolated Jews. Unlike in Israel, I don’t see the war mindset, plans and leaders here. I sometimes wonder, if the American Jewish community had been asked to organize D-Day, could the community have actually come together and created a single, comprehensive plan and followed it? I’m not sure. Based on the post-Oct. 7 situation here in this country, I worry we are not where we should be — where we need to be. 

JI: You built AJC’s influence partly through bipartisan relationships. Is that model still viable, or does the current political environment force Jewish organizations to choose sides?

DH: It certainly elevates the importance of groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Democratic Majority for Israel. Support for Israel, in both political parties, can obviously no longer be taken for granted. That’s especially true now in the Democratic Party, all the more so after the primary election in New York earlier this week. 

But there’s also an emerging cultural war inside the Republican Party. While I operated for nearly 50 years in the nonpartisan space, and positioned AJC as a nonpartisan organization with outreach at the highest level to both parties, today I would say it’s particularly important Jewish groups are operating inside multiple parties in a very partisan way. 

It’s clear that we have enormous work to do in the Democratic Party. It was not long ago that [Sens.] Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) were the outliers when it came to Israel and the Middle East. Fast forward a couple of years and they are now the clear majority. Every Jewish organization looking for a Democrat from Washington lines up to invite Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA). If he’s not available, they’re all baffled as to who else to invite from the contingent of Democrats in the U.S. Senate. 

The question for the 501(c)(3) groups that are nonpartisan is, what do they bring to the table? In an earlier era, Jews were seen as a very important constituency with many voices, reach and impact. I’m not sure what the power equation is today for nonprofit Jewish organizations and why people in Washington should listen to them as they would have a few years ago.

The challenge for Jewish organizations is how to restore their indispensability to the national conversation. Posting on X, issuing statements, if no one is reading them or thinking about the messaging then what’s been accomplished? There is a huge amount of work to be done. I hope and pray the American Jewish community is up to the task.  

JI: After immersing yourself in this history, are you more or less optimistic than when you started?

DH: I could not have spent 50 plus years in global Jewish advocacy without being a believer in the possibility of change for the better. I’ve seen it in my lifetime. I’ve seen the miracle of the rescue of Jews from the Soviet Union and the rescue of Jews from Ethiopia. 

I also understand as a Jew I’m commanded to believe in the possibility of a better tomorrow and not to succumb to despair. Having said all of that, I would be totally dishonest if I didn’t tell you that I’ve never been more worried in my adult lifetime than I am right now.

The architect of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s viral video campaign paid homage to the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in a series of tweets uncovered by Jewish Insider — posts in which the operative asserted that late Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar “gave his entire life until the end fighting for his people’s liberation.”

Records show Donald Borenstein got paid more than $90,000 last year by the Mamdani campaign for his services as director of video — a role in which, according to his LinkedIn, he served as “primary cinematographer” for the social media imagery that propelled the democratic socialist legislator into Gracie Mansion. 

Borenstein’s Instagram indicates he has since assumed the title of “creative director” at City Hall, and he has been credited for official videos promoting the mayor and his agenda. Borenstein was also featured in a recent comedy sketch starring Mamdani and his top staffers that was shared on the official NYC Mayor’s Office YouTube channel.

Yet despite receiving attention from The New York Times and New York Post as a member of Mamdani’s inner circle, Borenstein’s profile online has largely escaped notice so far. 

Archives of his X account show that in 2024, a day after Sinwar was killed by the IDF, Borenstein described imagery of his death, captured in Israeli drone footage, as “absolutely overflowing with symbolism.”

“[I]nsanely funny that israelis are so genocidally up their own ass that they have basically hand-delivered one of the most heroic possible images they could here lmao,” Borenstein wrote from his X handle @boringstein on Oct. 17, 2024, and just a few months before Borenstein began working for Mamdani’s campaign.

Borenstein appears to have deleted this tweet, and all others referenced in this story, at some later point, though archived images remain accessible.

Federal Election Commission filings show that a few months before the posts, Borenstein wrapped up work for another politician highly critical of Israel: then-Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who was serving out the last few months of his term after he lost his reelection to a primary challenge from Rep. George Latimer (D-NY). 

The cinematographer further mocked the Israeli decision to release the video of Sinwar sitting on a couch and tossing a stick at the drone moments before he was killed.

“‘[S]urely this man who gave his entire life until the end fighting for his people’s liberation with no proxy will look bad when we show footage of his last stand,’” Borenstein wrote sarcastically, concluding a third post with the phrase “From the river to the sea,” often understood as calling for the annihilation of the entirety of Israel between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and three Palestinian flag emojis. 

When one reply compared the terrorist with Tom Hanks’ character in the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” the cinematographer responded with enthusiasm.

“[I]n earnest!!! you could not direct this better lol,” Borenstein replied. “[I] am honestly so deeply moved.”

In another since-deleted tweet, Borenstein wrote that “the fascist state of Israel will fall in our lifetimes.”

Neither the video producer nor the Mamdani team responded to questions about the tweets. 

Borenstein is one of several figures instrumental in Mamdani’s rise whose social media accounts feature explicit support for Sinwar and the terrorist organization he led, even though the mayor has condemned terrorism personally.

In February, JI reported that the co-founder of the independent “Hot Girls for Zohran” social media and canvassing campaign had also shared multiple pro-Hamas posts. In March, JI reported that Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji — whom The Cut described as a “de facto adviser” to the mayor’s campaign — had liked posts on Instagram celebrating the Oct. 7 attacks.

Nearly half (47%) of young Jewish women reported dating less as a result of increased antisemitism and other negative consequences of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, according to a new survey by Jewish Women International. 

Over one-third (36%) of respondents said they’ve ended existing romantic relationships due to these dynamics, while 18% said they’ve stopped online dating altogether. 

Many of the Jewish American women surveyed, who were between the ages of 20 and 34, reported other negative impacts to their romantic relationships including strained conversations (75%), arguments (53%) and decreased contact or connection (39%). 

One respondent described ending a relationship over “our differing levels of Zionism” and while another experienced “tension in our relationship” on the “first anniversary of Oct. 7.” One said she “ultimately ended my relationship with my partner because he was always so angry about Gaza but never showed any anger toward antisemites, toward Hamas, or even to an antisemitic gunman who killed two of my peers.”

A vast majority (71%) of respondents said they’d changed what they’re looking for in a dating partner in the aftermath of the attacks, which for several meant seeking out exclusively Jewish partners,

“I decided to only date Jewish to avoid any blatant antisemitism, and also to ensure that there would be common ground,” one wrote. “Before October 7, like, sure, I wasn’t opposed to going on a date with someone who wasn’t Jewish, and exploring that opportunity. And now — not really so much,” another said. “Felt deeper connections to Jews I know and are strangers. Exclusively wanted to date only Jews,” another wrote.

Jewish singles have been grappling with the impact of increasingly heated antisemitic rhetoric on dating apps and among potential romantic interests for years now, as several told Jewish Insider in 2024 that they too had pivoted to seeking a Jewish partner as they waded through politically charged rhetoric on dating profiles.

Even more than their dating lives, survey respondents experienced negative impacts to their mental health (75%) and friendships (74%), with 80% reporting decreased contact in their platonic relationships. For those on college campuses, 68% said their sense of belonging was damaged in the aftermath of Oct. 7, and 63% said the same of their relationships with their classmates.

In professional settings, 39% of respondents said they’d felt pressured to minimize their Jewish identity and 18% said they’d removed Jewish content from their resumes. Several said in written responses that they’d been drawn to work in Jewish advocacy by their experiences. 

“JWI has dedicated significant time and resources to a comprehensive national survey of the impact of antisemitism and misogyny on young Jewish women. Based on our findings, young Jewish women feel disenfranchised in the workplace, ostracized in social circles, and compelled to erase their Jewish identities for fear of personal safety,” said Meredith Jacobs, CEO of JWI, who added that the organization will focus its programming on “post-traumatic growth.” 

“As the mothers of the next generation of the Jewish diaspora, the support these women receive will directly impact the future of Jewish peoplehood,” Jacobs continued.

The 514 respondents were largely reached through JWI’s networks, including focus groups at the organization’s leadership conference, between Nov. 11-Dec. 22, 2025.

Long before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, parents — especially Jewish parents — wondered and at times struggled with how to speak to their children about antisemitism.

In the midst of the antisemitism that exploded in the wake of the attack on southern Israel and continued to rise through the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas, journalists Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi found themselves navigating that challenge — and found no help to guide them.

“The fact that our kids are talking about it, [it’s] something I’m dealing and grappling with in New York City in 2023 at the time,” Golodryga, a CNN news anchor, told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “I never thought that we’d be having to address [it] so directly. But there were no resources on this issue. I asked my kid’s school about it, [saying], ‘What are you doing to address antisemitism?’ And in a longly worded statement, it was clear that there were no resources. They weren’t really doing anything.” 

In Israel, Levi, an anchor on Israel’s Channel 12, was asked about antisemitism by her pre-teen son. “And I was sort of floored by it,” she told JI. “I didn’t even know how to begin answering because I wasn’t planning to answer that question, explaining and answering a lot of other questions that Oct. 7 brought to the table.”

As a result, Golodryga said, “Yonit and I decided to try to write the book we couldn’t find.” The result was their debut book, Don’t Feed the Lion, released on Tuesday.

After the Oct. 7 attacks, Golodryga and Levi spent much of their professional bandwidth reporting on the war. The weekly writing and brainstorming sessions for the book, Golodryga explained, were “cathartic” and provided an opportunity to “step aside and away from all of the breaking news and the heartache of the day.” For Levi, having that support system and the experience of writing the book amid so much turmoil at home was “like a ray of light inside this darkness of the last two years.”

Don’t Feed the Lion is a novel targeted to middle school students, but with lessons, scenarios and parables that anyone who has experienced or witnessed discrimination — in any of its forms — will recognize.

The book’s main plot point revolves around a pair of Jewish siblings in Chicago. The older of the two, Theo Kaplan, a soccer enthusiast and co-captain of his school’s team, is shaken when prominent soccer player Wes Mitchell goes on an antisemitic rant. Days later, the eighth grader’s teammates vandalize his gym locker with a swastika. Theo, who is weeks away from his bar mitzvah, faces inner turmoil as he grapples with the fallout of Mitchell’s comments and the responses to the incident by his friends, teammates and school administrators. (Spoiler alert: the school is more than happy to sweep the incident under the rug.)

Meanwhile, Theo’s younger sister, Annie, sneakily creates an account on a social media platform in an effort to get concert tickets, but ends up falling into a Reddit-esque black hole of antisemitic drivel, which she attempts to fight despite being far outnumbered by anonymous online trolls.

Theo finds himself an ally in Gabe, a new student who moved to Chicago after his mother’s death from COVID-19. Gabe, although an outside observer, becomes the readers’ eyes and ears into the Kaplan family when he is paired with Theo for a family heritage project that sees the two spotlight Theo’s grandparents, Ezra and Talia.

“It’s obviously a fictional book, but there are several real-life experiences that we’ve encountered, that I’ve encountered with some family members, going back several years ago, where antisemitism not only wasn’t really addressed, but when it was facing students and faculty members at schools, it wasn’t treated or given the prioritization that that other forms of hate were given,” Golodryga said.

But whereas many stories and fiction novels about Jewish families settle into tired tropes, Don’t Feed the Lion takes a more realistic approach to the American Jewish experience: Ezra and Talia are a mixed Ashkenazi-Mizrahi couple — a rarity in the world of Jewish literature. The family dynamic is challenging, with estrangement between Theo and Annie’s grandparents and their aunt’s family. And Theo faces the relatable social pressures that many young assimilated Jews encounter as they feel torn between spending Friday nights socializing with friends during a time traditionally set aside for Shabbat meals with family.

Beyond capturing the zeitgeist of the modern American Jewish family, Theo is a relatable protagonist — owing in part to Golodryga and Levi’s own children, who inspired elements of Theo’s personality, backstory and experiences. Golodryga recalled her son’s reaction to the response, in 2022, to antisemitic social media posts made by then-Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving. 

“It seemed like everyone was apologizing for him but him, and he was allowed to play,” she explained. Irving was ultimately suspended for eight games, more than a week after the initial social media post, after repeated opportunities in which he had refused to distance himself from the content of the post. NBA heavyweights, including LeBron James and Jaylen Brown, a vice president in the NBA’s players’ union, defended Irving at the time.

Golodryga said her son didn’t know how to approach the situation. “As a New Yorker, he even said, ‘So can I not go to games? Or can that mean that I shouldn’t be a fan, or I can’t watch him anymore? He doesn’t want me to.’ So that’s always sat in the back of my mind.” 

Where art perhaps most imitates life is in how administrators in the story respond to the swastika incident — not by addressing it head-on, but by hoping to sweep it under the rug, thereby avoiding the need for disciplinary action that could keep Theo’s soccer team from advancing to the state-level competition. 

At the heart of the book, Levi said, is “that the kids really get what’s wrong and what’s right” — even when the adults in the room do not. “At the end of the day, it’s like the grown ups [in the book] and in reality too, sort of obfuscate … and say, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t stand up because it’s not good for my workplace, or it’s too much bureaucracy,’ or all the other things that are said in this book, and the kids at the end of the day, they know, they get what is wrong and what is right.”

The Toronto International Film Festival reversed course on Thursday, deciding to air “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue,” a documentary about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, at its upcoming festival.

TIFF had faced serious backlash from Jewish organizations and Canadian politicians over its initial decision to cancel the screening due to the film’s usage of Hamas footage from the attacks, saying the terror organization had not approved them for use.

TIFF board member John Ruffolo told the Toronto Sun that the organization decided at a board meeting Thursday that the movie “will be exhibited as planned and even bigger than originally.”

The documentary tells the story of retired Israeli general Noam Tibon, who raced from Tel Aviv to rescue his son and two young granddaughters trapped in a safe room in Kibbutz Nahal Oz when Hamas terrorists invaded on Oct. 7.

Another source told the Sun that TIFF President Cameron Bailey and Barry Avrich, the film’s director, were essential to the decision, along with input from philanthropist Heather Reisman and entrepreneur Henry Wolfond, both influential Jewish Canadians.

Councillor Brad Bradford, who had called on TIFF to reverse course, said he was “relieved” by the organization’s decision, “but the fact it was ever pulled — silencing a Canadian filmmaker and granting legal legitimacy to a listed terrorist organization — is deeply troubling. It should not have taken a public outcry to correct this mistake.”