For Rabbi Aharon Ariel Lavi, who lives on the Gaza border with his wife and five children, the events of Oct. 7, 2023, are deeply personal. 

But, professionally, Lavi is particularly concerned by how the Jewish community responded after the Oct. 7 attacks — spending hundreds of millions of dollars to combat antisemitism, with precious little to show for it. After eight months of research, he has a blueprint for fixing it.

At a webinar co-hosted by Lavi’s Jerusalem Interfaith Center, the Tisch Center for Jewish Dialogue, Anu – Museum of the Jewish People and the Jewish Peoplehood Coalition, a pointed question was posed to those involved in combating antisemitism: Does exposing the atrocities of Oct. 7 actually reduce antisemitism? 

Lavi, CEO of JIC, presented new research suggesting the answer is more complicated — and more uncomfortable — than most in the Jewish philanthropic and organizational world would want to acknowledge. 

“Antisemitism is the result of a machine,” Lavi warned. “A combination of political Islam and radical Marxism whose purpose is to take down the West. This machine cannot be fought with videos on TikTok. It’s not in the same field. We need to build a machine of allies in a strategic manner.”

The core findings of JIC’s report, “Allies of the Jewish People and the State of Israel: Global Strategic Mapping and Policy Recommendations,” assert that the Jewish community does not have a hasbara problem, and antisemitism cannot be explained away. Based on Lavi’s research, exposing audiences to factual documentation of atrocities or leaning on narratives of Jewish victimhood are frequently ineffective and often counterproductive — particularly in progressive circles dominated by neo-Marxist theories of power, where there are oppressors and the oppressed.

“What we are facing today is not a hasbara or a PR problem that more facts and information can solve. It is one of narrative. The best response to this period of Jewish vulnerability is to go deeper into our own story — who we are, where we come from and what we stand for — and use that story to build bridges with others who share our values and our commitment to a better world,” said Tracy Frydberg, director of the Tisch Center for Jewish Dialogue at Anu, who introduced the session.

“If we had no potential friends, we should just focus on building higher walls,” Lavi said. “But that is not the case.”

For the study, JIC, which is spinning off from the Ohr Torah Stone network this month to become an independent organization, mapped out roughly 2.5 billion untapped allies worldwide, including Hindus, moderate Muslims, evangelical Christians outside of the United States, progressive communities in South America and religious minorities across the Middle East. Lavi asserts that the American evangelical community remains virtually the only group that receives sustained engagement from Jewish organizations — through Passages, Christians United for Israel, BZ Media and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

“There are a billion Hindus worldwide — forming highly influential, wealthy minorities in the United States, Australia and the Emirates,” Lavi noted. “Yet how many full-time Jewish professional staff members are dedicated to building relationships with them? The same under-investment applies to moderate Muslims and evangelicals outside the U.S.”

Lavi’s study is the result of eight months of work by a team of seven international researchers. The 350-page report is built on more than 100 in-depth interviews with global community leaders. 

Lavi says these individuals are not merely data points, but instead they represent an active network ready to be deployed for educational content, public statements and community mobilization. The goal is allies who speak in their own voice to their own communities.

Lavi’s study and the criticisms embedded within it of the Jewish organizational world land in the middle of a broader philanthropic reckoning on the subject, with growing recognition in the field that there is waste, redundancies and a lack of clear metrics for success. This was highlighted last year in an opinion piece in eJP by Jewish Funders Network President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny, based on a study commissioned by JFN and conducted by Dr. Eitan Hersh of Tufts University. 

Spokoiny warned donors against doubling down on failed campaigns and challenged the field to prioritize results over rhetoric.

It is a diagnosis that resonates with Soraya M. Deen, a Muslim feminist lawyer and senior member of the Muslim Reform Movement of North America. Deen — who has spent years working alongside the Jewish community to fight antisemitism both from within her own community — has worked alongside Lavi for years in this work. On the webinar during the discussion portion of the event, Deen asserted: “Our work lies in problems we have created and solutions we have not explored.”

The research also exposed the pitfalls of lazy coalition-building. 

“Just spending money on allies does not mean you build alliances; you need to know who and where to invest it,” Lavi argued. 

“The mistake many Jewish organizations and funders made before Oct. 7 was to invest in the wrong partners,” he said. 

“A lot of organizations think if Hindus and evangelicals support Israel, let’s put them in the same conference — and they fail to understand that Hindus and evangelicals have a 200-year conflict between them,” Lavi explained. “They don’t mix together.”

Lavi called for Jewish organizations to “grow up” and begin planning for the long term. 

“Let’s stop thinking about how many likes we’ll get on our videos, but let’s build a strategy for the next 30 years and not the next three months,” he said. “This disease in the philanthropic world, where people invest for three years and then move on, is detrimental for this ecosystem, because the Muslim Brotherhood has a strategy for 100 years — and you cannot fight it with a three-year grant cycle.”