Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs To Know by David Harris

Summary

Podcast Summary

New Books Network – Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs To Know by David Harris

Date: May 8, 2026
Host: Renee Garfinkel
Guest: David Harris

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Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network features a conversation between host Renee Garfinkel and David Harris, longtime leader in global Jewish advocacy and author of Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know. The discussion explores the enduring, adaptable, and often misunderstood nature of antisemitism—its forms, contradictions, and persistent dangers for societies at large. Drawing from both sweeping historical analysis and personal family history, Harris provides candid insights into what makes antisemitism structurally unique, why myths persist, and why understanding these patterns is essential for everyone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Antisemitism as Conspiracy, Not Just Prejudice

• Conspiracy vs. Simple Bias:
  • Harris distinguishes between ordinary prejudice (looking down on a group) and antisemitism, which involves “endowing Jews... with certain powers in the minds of antisemites. The powers are sweeping, they are malevolent, they are self centered” (David Harris, 03:39).
  • Unlike other bigotries, antisemitism sees Jews as active agents of world events—a “uniquely durable conspiracy system that adapts to whatever cultural moment it inhabits” (Renee Garfinkel, 01:35).

2. Durability, Adaptability, and Lethality

• Structural Differences with Other Bigotries:
  • Antisemitism is historically unique for its longevity, adaptability, and lethality: from medieval expulsions and ghettos to the Inquisition and the Holocaust (David Harris, 05:14).
  • Harris emphasizes, “what distinguishes antisemitism is its durability, and with its durability, its adaptability, and with its adaptability, its lethality” (05:14).

3. Contradictions and Irrationality

• Persistent Contradictory Accusations:
  • Antisemitism irrationally accuses Jews of being both capitalists and communists, insiders and outsiders, “the exemplar of white privilege and supremacy... and... the poisoner of the white race” (David Harris, 08:04).
  • Harris quotes Jonathan Swift: “You cannot reason a person out of a view that they did not reason themselves into” (08:24).

4. Linguistic and Political Issues: 'Antisemitism' Unhyphenated

• Why the Hyphen Matters:
  • Harris stresses omitting the hyphen in 'antisemitism' to avoid the misleading implication that all 'Semites' (as an imagined racial group) cannot be anti-Semitic, especially used as a defense in parts of the Arab world (David Harris, 10:01).

5. Jewish Life Under Islamic Rule: The 'Golden Age' Myth

• Complex Realities:
  • The “Golden Age” of Jewish life in Muslim societies is debated; even in Spain, “Jews were still not equal, fully entitled citizens” (Renee Garfinkel, 14:27; David Harris, 14:41).
  • Harris notes, “I've also been looking for many years... where they achieved true equality under Muslim rule. And that's much harder to find” (14:41).

6. Antisemitism in Muslim Societies is Not Just About Israel

• Beyond the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
  • Harris cites Pew Research Center data showing staggering rates of negative views of Jews in many Muslim-majority countries, predating Israel’s existence (David Harris, 15:25).
  • Historical evidence includes pre-1948 pogroms and discriminatory practices (15:25–18:31).

7. Erasure of Middle Eastern Jewish Communities

• After 1948:
  • The near-total disappearance of Jewish communities from the Middle East is often minimized or ignored in public discourse, overshadowed by focus on Palestinian refugees (David Harris, 21:05).
  • Harris shares his wife’s traumatic experience fleeing Libya in 1967 after their home was attacked by a mob.

8. Anti-Zionism as Modern Antisemitism

• Masquerade and Selective Outrage:
  • Harris argues, “Anti Zionism was the new anti Semitism, that this was ... just an elegant masquerade” (23:35).
  • Singling out Jews and Israel alone for denial of self-determination is inconsistent unless someone is a true universalist—otherwise, “something else is going on,” Harris asserts, pointing to enduring patterns of scapegoating (23:35–28:07).

9. Personal Reflections and Purpose of the Book

• Family Trauma & Societal Relevance:
  • Harris discusses his family’s multigenerational experiences—from Nazi and Soviet to Arab antisemitism—and how researching the book deepened his drive to offer strategies for action, not just chronicle history (28:39).
  • “We're now facing the genie out of the bottle. It's back. The expiration date on post Holocaust taboo on antisemitism is over... The purpose of this book... is to create a kind of guide or manifesto... but most importantly, act. And if you don't act, then I'm not sure the book has the value for which I intended it” (28:39).

10. Antisemitism as a Societal Warning Sign

• Broader Implications:
  • Harris emphasizes that societies ignoring antisemitism do so at their peril—its unchecked spread signals deeper democratic and social decay (32:18).
  • Reflecting on Nazi Germany: “Whatever may begin with Jews never ends with Jews. So in my final chapter... this is one of the key elements. Why should Christians care about antisemitism? ...when it surges, it's a warning sign. It's a cancer that left unchecked, will metastasize. And if it metastasizes, Jews may be first. We're not the last” (32:18–35:49).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Durability:
  “What distinguishes antisemitism is its durability, and with its durability, its adaptability, and with its adaptability, its lethality.”
  — David Harris (05:14)

• On Contradictions:
  “If the Jew is both capitalist and communist... both the exemplar of white privilege... and the poisoner of the white race... to them it's not a contradiction. It's just another sly, cunning way that the Jews managed to cover all their bases in their unquenchable aim to conquer...”
  — David Harris (08:04)

• On Historical Forgetting:
  “No one wants to be confused by the fact that 850,000 Jews felt the need, the urgency, to leave lest they stay and become victims… My wife, her seven siblings, her parents were surrounded by a mob... and but for a miracle, they would have been burned to death.”
  — David Harris (21:05)

• On Act, Not Outrage:
  “The purpose of this book, above all is to create a kind of guide or manifesto for understand it, learn more about it, but most importantly, act. And if you don't act, then I'm not sure the book has the value for which I intended it.”
  — David Harris (28:39)

• On Broader Societal Threats:
  “Whatever may begin with Jews never ends with Jews… it's a warning sign. It's a cancer that left unchecked, will metastasize. And if it metastasizes, Jews may be first. We're not the last.”
  — David Harris (35:14)

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Notable Timestamps

• 03:26 — Conspiracy vs. prejudice
• 05:02 — What makes antisemitism enduring and lethal
• 08:04 — The irrational and contradictory nature of antisemitism
• 10:01 — The politics of unhyphenated ‘antisemitism’
• 12:03–15:14 — Myth of the “Golden Age” in Muslim societies
• 15:25–18:31 — Antisemitism in the Muslim world beyond Israel
• 21:05–23:12 — Forgotten exodus of Middle Eastern Jews
• 23:35–28:07 — Anti-Zionism as a modern mask for antisemitism
• 28:39 — Harris’s family history and book’s urgent purpose
• 32:18–35:49 — Antisemitism as a harbinger for wider societal danger

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Conclusion

David Harris’s interview is an urgent, clear-eyed look into the persistent threat and evolving forms of antisemitism. Placing historical and personal narratives side by side, Harris insists on confronting uncomfortable realities, studying patterns, and—most importantly—acting to protect democratic values and vulnerable minorities. His book, as discussed here, is both a wakeup call and a manual for resistance and resilience.

Transcript

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[David Harris]

welcome to the New Books Network.

[Renee Garfinkel]

Today's conversation is about a subject many people think they already understand. And yet, as we'll discover, it's often misunderstood, oversimplified, or emotionally charged in ways that obscure more than they reveal. Welcome to the Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas. I'm Renee Garfinkel. Antisemitism is sometimes described as the world's oldest hatred, but that phrase can sound abstract, even rhetorical, until you begin to trace how consistently and how creatively it has surfaced across centuries ideologies, religions and political systems. We are honored to welcome today's guest, David Harris, a longtime leader in global Jewish advocacy and the author of a new book, and what Everyone Needs to Know. David Harris served for more than four decades in senior leadership positions addressing antisemitism, human rights, and international affairs. What distinguishes this book is not just its breadth covering Christian, Muslim, racial, political and ideological antisemitism, but its insistence on a central idea that antisemitism is not simply prejudice and not merely another bias among many, but a uniquely durable conspiracy system that adapts to whatever cultural moment it inhabits. Harris also writes personally his own family history spanning Soviet Nazi and Arab world antisemitism gives the book an urgency without turning it into a memoir. This is not a book about outrage. It's a book about patterns and about what happens when societies fail to recognize them. David Harris, welcome to the podcast.

[David Harris]

Thank you very much. It's an honor to be with you.

[Renee Garfinkel]

David, you open by saying that antisemitism is best understood as a conspiracy theory rather than a simple prejudice. Why is that distinction so important? And why do you think it's still widely missed?

[David Harris]

First of all, prejudice generally looks down on people. I think we've all been exposed to examples of prejudice among some around us over the years in the form of jokes, snide remarks, derogatory comments. And of course, Jews are included in that space as well. But at the same time, Jews are endowed, if you will, with certain powers in the minds of antisemites. The powers are sweeping, they are malevolent, they are self centered. In other words, they embody an evil intent to act. And that intention to act explains, as you said in your opening comments, Rene, the notion of antisemitism not just as a bias or prejudice, though it is, but as something much more an enduring conspiracy theory that Jews are here on earth in order to achieve something nefarious, something malevolent, something malign, something that will destroy others and enrich, empower the Jews. And to the extent that I understand the subject matter, that makes Jews, as you said, quite unique in the prejudice we're talking about.

[Renee Garfinkel]

So some listeners would say, okay, hatred is hatred. Why single antisemitism out? What makes it structurally different from other forms of bigotry?

[David Harris]

I think, again, I'm not trying to win the victimhood Olympics by suggesting that somehow Jews are uniquely deserving of this attention. But it's clear if one even studies superficially the last couple of thousand years. I stress thousand years that what distinguishes antisemitism is its durability, and with its durability, its adaptability, and with its adaptability, its lethality. So is antisemitism a prejudice, a bias? Of course it is. But when it results in. Where shall I start, Rene? When it results with the introduction of expulsion, the Jews expelled from Britain for 300 or more years, not to mention other places. When it begins with the notion of the ghetto, I'm not now talking about the Nazi ghetto. I'm talking about the ghettos in what is today Italy, centuries and centuries ago that confined Jews into a space and lock them in from nighttime till the following morning, when it results in the Inquisition. As we saw in Spain and Portugal, where you had this trifecta of murder, conversion and expulsion, and when it results in the Holocaust above all, and the extermination of one third of the global Jewish population, two thirds of European Jewry, and the introduction of an entirely new Alphabet of murder that had no name until Raphael Lemkin gave it the name genocide, and that resulted in an A for Auschwitz and a Z for Zyklon B and everything in between, we're talking about something distinctive in its length and its death toll, in its persecution on a daily basis. So again, it's not in any way to minimize or ignore other biases, other prejudices. And I think, in fact, if I can flip it, it's what helps explain why Jews have been so uniquely involved in civil rights and human rights struggles over so many years. Because of Jews sensitivity to where all of this can lead for themselves, but for others as well and more broadly, for societies.

[Renee Garfinkel]

You describe antisemitism as being irrational and contradictory, that Jews are both capitalists and communists, insiders and outsiders. Why don't these contradictions weaken the belief system?

[David Harris]

Because, as I've come to understand, Rene, antisemitism is not a rational thought process. If it were a rational thought process, it couldn't have survived as long as it has because it defies rational analysis. And that's why to the anti Semite, if the Jew is both capitalist and communist, as you said, or insider and outsider, or let me add in contemporary terms, both the exemplar of white privilege and supremacy on the one hand, and on the other hand, the poisoner of the white race. Think Charlottesville, Virginia, and the chant, jews will not replace us. Who's the us? The US are white people. Then I used in the quote, a book, a quote from Jonathan Swift, of all people, the author of Gulliver's Travels, written centuries ago and having nothing to do with Jews as far as I know, in which he said, you cannot reason a person out of a view that they did not reason themselves into. So for the anti Semite, to the extent that I can get into their heads if I'm both Karl Marx and a Rothschild, to them it's not a contradiction. It's just another sly, cunning way that the Jews managed to cover all their bases in their unquenchable aim to conquer, to enrich themselves and to destroy others.

[Renee Garfinkel]

This question may sound technical, but you explain why the word antisemitism is no longer hyphenated. Tell us why that linguistic choice matters politically and also morally.

[David Harris]

Well, I wish I could say, as declaratively as you asked in your question, that it's no longer hyphenated. There's still a dispute. I mean, people like me insist on omitting the hyphen. But, for example, there are times to this day when I write for publications around the world and I write antisemitism as one word with a lowercase A, that the editors will replace it with anti hyphen, Semitism with an uppercase s. Now that, as you said, may sound trivial to some. You know, in the scheme of things, who cares? We have larger issues. The house is on fire. Who cares about a hyphen? But. But the hyphen has been used politically, largely in the Arab world, as there are many Arabs who insist on that they are Semites. And they draw upon sort of the 19th century German academic studies that created this notion of anti Semitism to suggest that, well, if they're Semites, because there is this Semitic group of people, when in reality what there was was a Semitic group of languages, but never in sort of nationalist or racial terms, a Semitic group of people. But if they are, by this extension a Semite, then how can you ever accuse them of being anti Semitic? They argue it would be being anti myself. And that, frankly speaking, is just a cheap, distracting way of diverting attention from the reality that antisemitism exists not just in the European Christian world or now in North America, Australia and elsewhere, but also coexists and has existed for centuries. As I addressed in the book, in the Muslim and Islamic worlds.

[Renee Garfinkel]

Well, let's talk about the Muslim world for a moment. The phrase golden Age is often used about Jewish life under Islamic. Tell us why that phrase obscures as much as it reveals.

[David Harris]

Well, as I learned in researching for the book, and I have to say as a sidebar, I thought I knew a lot about the subject going into the writing process. As you mentioned, I spent close to 50 years in the organized Jewish world, much of it addressing antisemitism globally and from a variety of sources. And on top of it, as you also mentioned, my mother, my father and my wife were all the immediate targets of Nazi, Bolshevik and jihadist antisemitism. So I thought I knew a lot. I learned an even greater amount by living with this project 24 7. And for anyone listening to the podcast who's ever tried to write a book, it's a long and lonely exercise. And when you're dealing with a topic like antisemitism, it can also be a very dispiriting exercise as you learn More and more and peel away more and more layers. So the Golden Age of Spain, I just assumed, because that was what was fed to me was an exception to the rule. And then as I was writing the book, I discovered, wait a second, even that is viewed controversially and by serious, well, credentialed people on both sides. So in the book, I didn't take a position per se. The book was not about the Golden Age of Spain. That was a subset of the book. But I did note that even the Golden Age of Spain is viewed differently by extremely well placed people with, with, with impressive titles. And so we, we need to, to grapple with that one as well and not simply put that one on under the list of, well, here's an example of where, you know, Muslims ruled and everything was hunky dory and, and, and if only we could return to those, those days. Maybe, maybe not, or maybe somewhere in

[Renee Garfinkel]

between what you're saying, it was not as golden, Jews were still not equal, fully entitled citizens, Is that what you're saying?

[David Harris]

I'm citing experts who are saying that and I believe them enough to include them in the book. And I've also been looking for many years, for example, not just the word Jews were allowed to thrive in the sense of pray freely, study science or medicine, or otherwise contribute culturally, but where they achieved, to use your word, where they achieved true equality under Muslim rule. And that's much harder to find.

[Renee Garfinkel]

So how do you respond to people who say, and there are many people who say antisemitism in Muslim societies is just a reaction to Israel?

[David Harris]

Again, I think it's too cheap and easy to try and get away with that. First of all, there is data and the data comes from authoritative sources, principally the Pew Research Center. And the Pew Research center is not a Jewish organization or a Zionist group. It's a highly respected, to the very best of my knowledge, nonpartisan independent research institution. And they've done a couple of massive studies in the 2000s and I cite at least two of their studies to give you a longitudinal report on what they found about attitude towards Jews. Their word, not mine, not Israelis, not Zionists, Their word Jews. And in their studies, and I don't have the figures tattooed on my mind at the moment, but the hostility to Jews goes up to 99% in a number of the Arab and Muslim societies where the Pew teams worked. And I think the lowest number of any of the countries they studied was in the 70s, meaning 70 plus percent had hostility towards Jews. Nowhere, nowhere in their studies was there any majority view favorable to Jews. Again, I stress we're not talking Israelis or Zionists. That's the word they used. And then if you go into pre1948 history in what is today the Arab and Muslim worlds, you'll find many, many examples of inequality, of prejudice, of discrimination, of pogroms, including in my wife's native Libya, pogroms as recently as 1945, three years before the rebirth of the state of Israel. How to explain that fact? Or how to explain the tragedies in Baghdad or the use of distinctive clothing in a number of Islamic societies to identify Jews? So more often it's well, you know, we can't be anti Semitic because we ourselves are Semites, though there is no such group of people. And we're not anti Semitic because we never had a Holocaust. Well, if the standard is a Holocaust, a final solution, then to the best of my knowledge, there was no Holocaust with gas chambers and crematoria in the Muslim world. That is true. It's true. But if that's the only standard, then we're misleading ourselves in the way we're assessing the situation.

[Renee Garfinkel]

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[Renee Garfinkel]

But in your book, you document the near total disappearance of Jewish communities from the Middle east after 1948. Why is this history so rarely discussed?

[David Harris]

Well, that's a great question. And it's a question that my wife and others who are part of that 850,000 group of people keep asking, and to which they get very unsatisfying and unsatisfactory responses. And I will add that in my global diplomacy over the decades, in scores and scores of countries, I would also raise this issue in order to try and put the Palestinian refugee issue into some greater context, because otherwise this issue stands entirely on its own, that there was one refugee population as a result of the rebirth of Israel. This was the Palestinian refugee situation. And no one wants to be confused by the fact that 850,000 Jews felt the need, the urgency, to leave lest they stay and become victims. My wife, by the way, in 1967, so 19 years after Israel's rebirth, my wife and her family had chosen to stay in Libya, somehow believing that the new Libya, the Libya of independence in 1951, might actually become a safe country for Jews. Huge mistake on their part. In 1967, my wife, her seven siblings, her parents were surrounded by a mob in their modest home in Tripoli. And but for a miracle, they would have been burned to death. Very much in the spirit, if you will, of October 7th. But no one wants to hear about it. And the answers I got most often in chancelleries and ministries was David, that was history. We're talking about today what's going to happen to the Palestinian people?

[Renee Garfinkel]

Let's talk about today. Let's talk about anti Zionism. Is it merely a cover for antisemitism, just a currently socially acceptable proxy for the old antisemitic ideas? Or to put it another way, if, God forbid, Israel did not exist, would Antisemitism simply find another outlet.

[David Harris]

I think, as it sounds like you yourself know very well, I think the question answers itself. And by the way, any Jew who lived in the Soviet Union, any Jew who lived in the Arab world, including my wife, could have told you decades ago that anti Zionism was the new anti Semitism, that this was again to borrow from you, Rene, this was just an elegant masquerade. You know, maybe, maybe in some places. How shall I put this. Hitler and Stalin gave antisemitism a bad name. They went, quote too far and it was hard to justify, if you will, the existence of Auschwitz and Belzec and Birkenau and Buchenwald and Babillard. It was difficult to justify the Slansky trials, the doctor's plot in the Soviet Union, the Stalin's plan to deport all the Jews internally to Birobidjan in Eastern Siberia. That was a step too far. So in polite society, the notion of anti Zionism became a very convenient cover. No, some of my best friends are Jews. My neighbor, my doctor, my lawyer. It's not a problem with Jews, it's just about anti Zionism. And some Jews in the Jewish, Bolshevik and Bundest tradition even joined. The head of the Green Party in Britain today. Zach Polanski proudly says that he comes from a multi generational anti Zionist family. The head of the ndp, the New Democratic Party in Canada, Avi Lewis, the same. But the reality is that, and I think Natan Sharansky said it best, the iconic Soviet prisoner of conscience and now Israeli citizen for several decades, that if you single out one country and one country alone, one people and one people alone, and say they among all the nations of the world and the peoples of the world are to be denied the right of self determination in their ancestral homeland. Something is going on here. If you want to be consistent and you want to be a globalist and say all countries should be abolished, we should live under one world government with Esperanto as our universal language. I, David, may think you're nuts, but I could argue you're consistent. But, but if, but if your argument is I want the Palestinians to have a state, I want every other nation to have a state, I don't question the legitimacy, so to speak, of the United States or Canada or Australia, though they were colonial enterprises, or why Europeans dominate in Latin America. I don't question why Arabs are present throughout North Africa having invaded, conquered, converted, settled, occupied. I don't question why a country like Jordan exists when it's the product of British colonial Map makers similar to Iraq. I don't question why South Asia became India and Pakistan and then Pakistan subdivided into Pakistan and Bangladesh. I don't question any of that. All I question is one people who, by the way, have this unique 3,000 or more year connection to a tiny piece of land that has been central to their faith, their religion, their metaphysics, their view of life. And that's to be removed, that's to be challenged and questioned. Something else is going on. And again, to use your word, it's a convenient masquerade for the deeper hatred. And if Israel disappeared, given the adaptability and ingenuity of Jewish hatred, I have no doubt whatsoever that there would have been something else. Jews in Covid, Jews in economic decline, Jews and climate change. Because that's been the pattern. Before Israel existed. After Israel existed.

[Renee Garfinkel]

You've talked a bit about your own family's experience, which is kind of a multicultural experience of antisemitism. How did writing this book, that lonely long period of activity, plunging into this really depressing and anxiety provoking material, how did the process of writing the book change affect your understanding of your own family's past?

[David Harris]

I think I have come to understand my family's past because I was one of those children. And I've seen in many families, children who want to know about their family's past, even when the families are reluctant to share the past, and other children for whom it's in the rearview mirror. It was yesterday. Who really cares? I plunged. I studied Russian, I trained to speak Russian because I wanted to understand my family's past. I went to live in the Soviet Union on a US Soviet exchange program. In 1974, I spent months in the Soviet Union. Very unusual for a Westerner, for an American. I wanted to understand. I traveled to Germany countless times. I wanted to understand. The same with Austria. I couldn't travel to Libya. And when I was first courting my wife many years ago, and I said, you know, I hope one day Libya will be open and we can return and you can show me where you went to school and where you lived and where you met your friends. And she said to me, over my dead body, there's no way I'm ever going back. Ever. The trauma is way too deep. But the truth, Rene, is I wrote the book, not just, let's call it as a tribute to my family. I wrote it principally, not as a history. The history is the prelude to what I'm trying to achieve, which is, what are the antidotes? What are the strategies? Okay, we're now facing the genie out of the bottle. It's back. The expiration date on post Holocaust taboo on antisemitism is over and people now feel much more comfortable. They don't feel the consequences any longer. They can be in politics, they can sit in the United States Congress, they can be Democrats, they can be Republicans, they can have the support of the party leadership, they can get campaign contributions from the party coffers, they can run for Prime Minister of Britain and come close. In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, I can give you so many examples of the change after we have been lulled into the belief that in the post war era, for a variety of reasons, from expanding liberal democracy, deepening pluralism, extending Holocaust awareness that we had found the Pfizer vaccine, we have found the antidote and antisemitism might not disappear, but it'd be marginalized. It's back. And the purpose of this book, above all is to create a kind of guide or manifesto for understand it, learn more about it, but most importantly, act. And if you don't act, then I'm not sure the book has the value for which I intended it.

[Renee Garfinkel]

Well, finally you also write that antisemitism is a warning sign for society as a whole. Tell us about that. Tell us what happens when societies don't see the handwriting on the wall and don't act in the way you recommend. What happens to those societies, since you

[David Harris]

use the word finally? I'll resist the temptation to spend the next hour because it deserves much more time. But in post World War I Germany, you had the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933. It was messy, it was wild, it was chaotic, but it was a democracy. And what happened? I argue in the book and elsewhere that a failure of imagination took hold in the Western world, by the way, in big parts of the Jewish world, about the stability of democracy. Democracy is a blip on the historical screen of our human civilization. The fact that we may achieve democracy does not mean we preserve and protect and defend democracy for eternity. It doesn't mean that history can't go backwards or sidestep. And Germany is a great example. This was arguably the most educated, the most cultured, the most advanced country in the world on the eve of Hitler's ascension to power in 1933, and look what happened. And Hitler obsessively spoke about the Jews. The Jews and the back. A stab in the back. Through theory. The Jews were responsible for Germany's defeat in World War I. The Jews were responsible for the economic depression of 1929. The Jews were responsible for the Bolshevik threat to Germany. We were responsible for everything. He was obsessed with the Jews. But Renee, Fast forward to 1945. We know the Jewish death toll. We know what the Holocaust became. But at the end of the day, the death toll was between, we're told, 60 and 70 million people. Because of Hitler's dismantling of democracy and his total control of power, 60 to 70 million people perished. Countries were ravaged. Nazi occupied countries from Greece to the Baltics and across Europe, east to west, were largely destroyed. How many orphans were created? How many widows were created? How many people were permanently scarred, amputees and others because of Hitler? The connection between the well being and protection of Jews and the well being and protection of liberal democracies has been shown to be the case time and again. And so, as others have said, and I quote them, whatever may begin with Jews never ends with Jews. So in my final chapter, explaining what I think are the strategies, this is one of the key elements. I mean, there are others as well, but this is one of the key elements. Why should Christians care about antisemitism? Why should people of all faiths who have a stake in liberal democracy care about antisemitism? Because when it surges, it's a warning sign. It's a cancer that left unchecked, will metastasize. And if it metastasizes, Jews may be first. We're not the last.

[Renee Garfinkel]

Well, on that note of warning, I hope our listeners and the rest of the world heeds the warning and takes the steps while you're still time. The book is what Everyone Needs to Know by David Harris. Thanks so much for talking with me today, David.

[David Harris]

It was my pleasure, Renee. Thank you.

[Renee Garfinkel]

And thanks to our researcher, Bela Pasakov.