It was late Friday night on October 6, and Noa Tishby was still wearing the T-shirt she’d had on at Shabbat dinner when the news from Israel began to trickle in. The Israeli-born activist and actor snapped into high gear from her home in Los Angeles, deploying her years of experience helping people understand Israel as she tried to describe the unprecedented attacks as they unfolded.

Live on Instagram—for hours without a break—she relayed the news she was receiving from friends in Israel. In those first hours and then days, it was all shock and horror, but Tishby was there for her social media followers, anchoring the new reality.

Six months later, when Iran unleashed an unprecedented missile and drone attack against Israel on April 13, Tishby immediately turned to social media to post a detailed report. Her video provided information not just about the assault but about Iran’s proxy network, which she called “a ring of terror.” Chiding “brainwashed so-called activists around the world” who said the attack was justified, she called for Iran to be held accountable for its “ongoing campaign to wipe Israel off the map and destabilize the entire Middle East to create a new power dynamic in the region.” In its first 24 hours, the video amassed more than half a million views on TikTok alone.

Tishby has become a prominent face and voice of Israel and the Jewish people in a time of rupture. She had already been playing that role online and in person long before October 7. She had even served briefly as an official envoy of the Israeli government. But since the Israel-Hamas war, and the concurrent dramatic rise in antisemitism, she has been seemingly omnipresent: speaking at nonprofit fundraisers, appearing alongside Jewish leaders and on college campuses, mobilizing celebrities and influencers, being interviewed by media outlets, speaking out against antisemitism and anti-Zionism and raising awareness of the hostages.

Her feeds on Instagram (754,000 followers) and TikTok (where her clips receive tens of thousands—sometimes more than a million—views) have become spaces for Tishby to amplify October 7 survivor stories, challenge anti-Israel protesters and educate about the history of the region. After years of “yelling into the void” while advocating for Israel, Tishby said, “that actually people are listening now is reassuring.”

Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Tishby, 48, became a successful actor in Israel. When she moved to Los Angeles about 20 years ago, she appeared in films such as The Island and numerous television series, including Big Love, NCIS, Dig and The Affair.

But her biggest success came from finding a niche market in the television industry: choosing and selling Israeli formats, programs originating in Israel, that could be tweaked and replicated for American audiences. The first of these formats was B’Tipul, a 2005 Israeli drama series about a therapist and his clients that became HBO’s award-winning 2008 series In Treatment. This idea helped pave the way for other Israeli writers, producers and actors to make inroads in Hollywood.

“Not only is Noa knowledgeable, but she’s incredibly charismatic, and you’re just drawn to her,” said Samantha Ettus, an author and self-described “accidental activist” who founded 2024 New Voices to mobilize celebrities and influencers to speak out about antisemitism. “When you watch her advocate, you feel like she’s advocating for the entire Jewish population. It literally feels like she is our queen.”

Because of the increasingly heated conversation around antisemitism and Israel over the last few years, Tishby is now more focused on activism than entertainment, earning speaking fees that can rise into the tens of thousands of dollars, according to her booking agencies.

One of her first attempts to reach a larger audience was her 2021 best-selling book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, which became an essential text for many readers not familiar with the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Her recently released Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew, co-authored with former NFL linebacker and current Fox Sports 1 analyst Emmanuel Acho, investigates the contours and sources of antisemitism through topics like Jews and whiteness, Jews and power and how to be an ally.

Originally slated for publication in 2025, the book was rushed into production after October 7 and came out in April. It includes a chapter called “Director’s Cut: October 7th,” a transcript of Acho’s October 15 video interview with Tishby for his YouTube series, and another titled “October 8th,” an exploration of how the world reacted the day after the Hamas attacks.

Most mornings, Tishby wakes up by 6:00, gets coffee immediately and runs through emails. If her 8-year-old son is with her and not with her ex-partner, she helps him get ready and drives him to school. Back home around 8:30, she tries to prioritize workouts, since during the first few months of the war, she said, “I hadn’t moved from my desk and my body was starting to be very angry.” Zoom and in-person meetings crowd her schedule; even before October 7, she traveled frequently, rarely in any one place for 10 days straight.

When her son is at home, she said, “I am 100 percent mom”—no phones or Zooms allowed. But he knows more or less what she does. Much to her delight, she said, he calls her “a speecher.” 

On social media, Tishby’s fashion sense reinforces her messaging. She wears Israel-themed T-shirts and layered necklaces with Jewish symbolism: a “Bring Them Home” dog tag, an Israel-shaped pendant, a Star of David, a chai and more. To any last doubters, the message is clear: She’s proudly Jewish and Israeli.

“Noa is the voice of strength, reason and power that so many of us needed” as the war started, said actor, author and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, who appeared with Tishby in a series of social media videos and other posts to help correct misinformation about the war, Israel and Jews. “Even when I felt despair, I knew she was one step ahead of so many conversations going on both online and in the real world. She is relentless in the absolute best way, as a warrior for Israel and the Jewish people.”

Omri Marcus, a veteran creative strategist who has worked with Tishby many times, praised her work in their most recent collaboration for Project-7-10, an Israel-based effort aimed at keeping the hostages in the public consciousness. Tishby is among a gallery of influencers reading final text messages from people who were murdered on October 7. 

“Her performance was flawless, and her video was incredibly moving,” Marcus said, noting that hers was one of the most-viewed clips in the campaign (along with those by Israeli singer Netta Barzilai and Bialik).

Tishby, a self-identified “staunch patriotic American Independent” who is “never on the side of extremism in any direction,” said she has been particularly incensed as American progressive organizations have continued to ignore the sexual violence perpetrated on October 7 and after. This, despite a March 26 New York Times interview with hostage Amit Soussana that detailed the sexual and physical abuse she suffered in captivity before her November release; despite the confession of one of the terrorists apprehended by Israeli authorities that he had raped a woman on the day of the invasion; and despite a March United Nations report indicating that rape and gang rape had likely occurred on that date.

“The world is still quiet,” Tishby said, her voice dropping with an audible quiver. “The anti-Israel sentiment has seeped into society so deeply that everybody is equivocating. And it’s just heartbreaking.” 

She said she is especially dismayed by the growing rift with Israel among the younger generations and on college campuses. She defines the problem as “a psychosis of a moral higher ground that doesn’t actually allow for free speech or dissenting views.”  The way to fix it, she believes, is to ban groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and efforts calling for BDS—boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. This, Tishby said, is “not about freedom of speech. This is about incitement for violence. These organizations are not about progressivism, or human rights or freedom or peace. They are about taking down Israel by all means necessary, like we saw on October 7.”

She comes down hard on campus protesters who are “waving the Palestinian flag now right after Israel’s been through the worst massacre since the Holocaust and is dealing with an enemy that is explicitly calling for Jewish genocide,” she said. “If you are demonstrating [for Palestine] right now, you’re pro-Hamas, because Hamas has won the Palestinian elections [in Gaza] and since then, has been not just holding the population hostage, but also brainwashing them for 20 years to massacre Jews.”

At the same time, Tishby rejects the expectation that a person has to choose a side in this war. She has often self-identified as being simultaneously pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, separating “Palestinians” from “Hamas.” In her recent book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew, she writes—as she has repeated in dozens of interviews and videos since October 7—“Absolutely Free Palestine. Free Palestine from Hamas.”

Although her current activism is independent of any one organization, Tishby served for a brief period as an official representative of the Israeli government. The short-lived coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid that took office in June 2021 appointed her as its inaugural special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization. In that capacity, she advocated for Israel at the United Nations, in Congress and elsewhere.

She continued in the post through the arrival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration at the end of 2022. But after speaking out publicly against one of the ruling coalition’s controversial proposed laws to overhaul the judicial system, she was dismissed.

“I knew it might cost me the position and I was O.K. with that,” she said. “Having or not having that position made no difference. I just continued doing my work.”

Part of that work is mobilizing Hollywood to engage with Israel, a two-decades long battle because, until now, Tishby asserted, “the majority of Hollywood didn’t want to touch Israel or Jewish identity.”

“The fact that we [now] have all these celebrities, Jewish and otherwise, that are standing by the Jewish community and Israel, and [who] say something to the effect of ‘Well, I don’t necessarily support all of Israel’s political factions, but I don’t want to see Israel destroyed,’ is extraordinary.”

Some of the bigger names in that celebrity community include actors Bialik, Debra Messing, Tiffany Haddish, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Tomer Capone, Brett Gelman and Michael Rapaport. There are also popular influencers creating content supporting Israel, like Montana Tucker, Lizzy Savetsky and Caroline D’Amore.

Tishby was among some 1,000 Jewish signatories to a letter condemning the acceptance speech by director Jonathan Glazer, whose film The Zone of Interest, about daily life going on next to Auschwitz during World War II, won two Academy Awards in March. In his speech, which got much applause, Glazer said: “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” 

Tishby called a counter letter in support of Glazer and also pushing for a ceasefire and the return of all hostages, signed by some 150 Jews in the entertainment industry, “extraordinarily unhelpful” at a time when “Jewish people suffered the worst massacre since the Holocaust and Jews are in danger all over the world.”

But, she added, she has seen a shift in Hollywood in recent years. “A lot of people in the Jewish community have woken up to and gotten smart about antisemitism and anti-Zionism and anti-Israel as it is manifested today,” she said.

Tishby’s collaboration with Acho for Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew continues her focus on fostering understanding, communication and relationship-building. In creating the book, the two would meet at one of their houses to talk about hot-button issues in sessions that lasted four to six hours, Acho told Hadassah Magazine. The book is written transcript-style, with the co-authors asking and answering each other’s questions, even if—as the book’s title promises—it got uncomfortable.

“Everything I thought of, I asked,” said Acho. “And when it got tense, we had an uncomfortable conversation. I love having uncomfortable conversations as long as there’s respect.”

A conversation about whiteness, for example, stretches over several chapters, as the co-authors wrestle with white privilege and why “Jewish” is not a racial identity.

In a chapter titled “Soul Food Shabbat,” Tishby writes that there are many who “feel that the Black community has slowly turned their backs on the Jewish community,” and that one of the reasons she wanted to write this book was “to rebuild the bridge between our communities.”

Acho replies that he “did see the anger of the Black community toward the Jewish community and the pain that existed in both groups,” and wanted to show the Jewish community that Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and others who were saying “ignorant and hurtful things” didn’t represent all Black people.

 “We should be walking out of that tunnel, arms locked, ready to do battle against our shared opponents—against hate, against marginalization, against oppression,” Acho writes.

Another chapter, “How This Book Almost Didn’t Happen,” centers on a conflict the co-authors had regarding his October 15 interview with Tishby for his Uncomfortable Conversations YouTube series. They had already started collaborating on their book when the October 7 massacre occurred. Acho then invited her to be on his series to talk about it. Acho told her he would be including a Palestinian perspective, Tishby said, but didn’t name the person.

When the trailer arrived, Tishby was “devastated,” she said, to see her comments interwoven with those from Noura Erakat, a Palestinian American activist and Rutgers University professor whom Tishby said is “a well-known anti-Israel activist.” Erakat, Tishby writes in the book, “rejected the description of the atrocities as ‘barbarism’ and appeared to defend the actions of Hamas.”

She asked Acho not to air the interview, but he did anyway, with Tishby as Part 1 and Erakat as Part 2, and Tishby walked away from the book project.  

“We each stepped away and took some time to process,” she writes in the book. “But ultimately I think we recognized each other’s heart, and realized where respect and love exist, disagreement can’t triumph.”

“Ultimately, I know Noa cares about me. Noa knows that I care about her. We’ve built that relationship over the course of time,” Acho said in the interview. “A true relationship can withstand disagreement, so long as there is respect.”  

When he announced the upcoming publication of their book in early April, Acho began receiving a lot of negative comments about his partnership with Tishby. Commenters criticized her as a “propagandist” and defender of the Israeli government.

He took to Instagram to read a section from the book that conveys his intentions: “I won’t necessarily agree with everything that Noa has to say, and we may not come to a uniform point of view, but that’s not the point. That’s not how real conversations work anyway. I want to learn more, to see things differently, and I want the aperture of my mind to be opened to a new perspective.”

And Tishby is similarly adamant on this point: Always have the conversation.

“Have an honest conversation that comes from an authentic place,” Tishby said. “We just have to shore up our attitude and dig our heels in the ground and be defiant in the most loving of ways, and we’ll be fine.” 

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Esther D. Kustanowitz is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor and consultant. She also co-hosts The Bagel Report podcast.