‘This is our 9/11': The words are like alarm bells for some New Yorkers

Within hours of the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel, the analogies began.

“This is our 9/11,” said Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, speaking on Fox News on Oct. 7. A day later, Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, called it “our 9/11,” and a day after that, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces echoed them, saying, “This is our 9/11. They got us.”

The idea that Oct. 7, 2023, is to Israel what the destruction of the World Trade Center 22 years ago was to the United States has not been confined to Israel, but has permeated U.S. think tanks, media outlets and the White House. President Joe Biden said that for a country the size of Israel, “1,300 innocent Israelis killed” is more like “15 9/11s.”

It's also an analogy that should serve as a warning sign for what may come next.

Udi Ofer, former ACLU attorney

For New York-area human rights activists, scholars and interfaith leaders, including some whose careers were shaped by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath, the analogy has triggered worries beyond the mounting death tolls – an estimated 1,400 killed in Israel from the Oct. 7 attacks, according to Israeli authorities, and nearly 7,000 in Gaza following Israeli retaliatory attacks, according to Gaza Health Ministry data disputed by the White House.

Some of the fears expressed in the first days after Oct. 7 have already been realized, as the NYPD, New York State Police and the FBI have reported spikes in religious hate crimes and threats. Advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the New York City-based Anti-Defamation League have reported a rise in bias-related incidents and complaints as well, including threats on social media.

The local leaders also express worry of the possible return of other injustices that followed 9/11: racial profiling, discrimination, and increased monitoring and suspicion of New Yorkers who are or are perceived to be Muslim or of Arab or South Asian descent. In a 2004 report a New York advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights cited this as the “misplaced retaliation for the events of Sept. 11.” The report noted “the perception” back then that law enforcement didn’t take the complaints seriously.

Udi Ofer, who was two days into his career as an attorney when the planes hit the Twin Towers, eventually worked at the ACLU for 20 years. He said comparison of Oct. 7 to Sept. 11 is “a fitting analogy, since both [events] saw the deliberate mass killings of innocent civilians.” Ofer, who was born and partly raised in Israel, added, “It's also an analogy that should serve as a warning sign for what may come next.”

“I have a fear that we're potentially on the precipice,” said Ofer, the John L. Weinberg visiting professor and lecturer at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs. “(W)e may see the same sort of backlash on civil liberties and civil rights that we saw after 9/11 that we will see” after the attacks in Israel.

But, he added, we’re “not there yet.”

The interfaith leaders and rights activists say now’s the time to push back against religious and ethnic bias, starting with the notion that the fears, worries and concerns of marginalized and vulnerable communities need to be taken seriously. Likewise, they point to the need to safeguard the free speech rights of those across the ideological spectrum.

Amardeep Singh co-founded the Manhattan-based civil rights group the Sikh Coalition after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said 9/11 showed the need for government officials to make strong, clearly worded statements condemning all discrimination and to respond swiftly to bias incidents.

“It's going to be very important for public officials to be 100% clear that whatever is happening in Israel, whatever is happening in Gaza, that does not give folks license to discriminate here in the United States,” Singh said.

Fear of worsening harm

After the Oct. 7 attacks, Ofer and others say they are reminded once again of what could happen in the name of U.S. national security, especially if the war drags out or widens to a multinational conflict. He noted that Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, declared “we’re in a religious war,” which Ofer said was “an incredibly irresponsible” statement.

Hundreds of Muslim, Arab and South Asian men were rounded up and jailed after 9/11, and tens of thousands of Muslims were forced to register with the government under the NSEERS program. Hundreds of mosques were placed under surveillance, including throughout the New York metropolitan area.

“We saw torture being deployed in interrogations. We saw passage of the U.S.A. Patriot Act and new, unprecedented government power,” Ofer said, including the ability to spy on American citizens without first needing to prove probable cause.

These government actions were also politically popular. The New York advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights noted that most Americans supported requiring Arabs and Arab-Americans to carry special identification cards and undergoing greater scrutiny at airports.

Sahar Aziz, a distinguished professor of law at Rutgers University, said there is a worrisome and connected storyline regarding treatment of Muslims – abroad and here in the U.S. – and that it began long before Sept. 11 and fuels.

In her book, “The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom,” Aziz wrote that for centuries, European and American intellectuals portrayed Islam as a false religion. That mindset, she argues, fueled the U.S. policies that targeted Muslims after 9/11.

Of recent bias incidents in New York, Aziz said, “I anticipate that it's going to get worse.”

Linda Sarsour, a Brooklyn native and executive director of the Muslim advocacy group MPower Change, is one of New York City’s most prominent Palestinian voices. She rose to prominence in the years after 9/11 as the head of the Arab American Association of New York.

She said she was discouraged by the failure right out of the chute by some elected officials after the Oct. 7 attacks.

Mayor Eric Adams, she pointed out, has repeatedly pledged his support to Jewish New Yorkers. Multiple Instagram posts since Oct. 7 declare “We #StandWithIsrael.”

“He does not mention Palestine or Palestinians in a single one of those posts,” Sarsour said.

The mayor did release a statement on Oct. 17, soon after a massive explosion at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of people.

“We mourn tonight for the loss of more innocent lives in this war,” the statement read. “The images we are seeing tonight in Gaza are gut-wrenching, and as we await confirmation of details from our intelligence community on how this terrible tragedy unfolded, everyone must do everything in their power to prevent any further killing of innocent civilians.”

The fears running through the Palestinian community of New York, Sarsour said, are no less than for people whose loved ones live in Israel. New York City is home to nearly 800,000 Muslims, according to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research organization, and just under 8,000 Palestinians reside in the entire state, according to census data.

“Imagine you're someone whose family’s in the line of ethnic cleansing – it’s what they believe,” Sarsour said. “They believe that there potentially is going to be a genocide.”

‘Incredibly disappointing’

For some Jewish New Yorkers, recent events have also forced difficult conversations with allies.

Ofer said he was “disappointed with many in the progressive community after the Oct. 7 attacks, where I felt that they were justifying the attacks by Hamas against innocent civilians in Israel. I found that to be incredibly disheartening and incredibly disappointing.”

He noted that he had family members who had died in the Holocaust and that he often travels to Israel.

“My father is there. I have family there. So I care deeply about the nation,” he said.

After the Oct. 7 attacks, Ofer said he called many of his progressive friends to drive home the point that “a life is a life.”

“It doesn't matter whether you're Israeli or Palestinian, we should always condemn the intentional killings of innocent civilians,” he said.

That message was at the center of an Oct. 14 sermon delivered by Rabbi Rachel Timoner at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope in which she said “every human life has equal value.”

Timoner said she and other Jewish leaders had been involved in protests against the Israeli government, which is led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We've also for years been protesting the occupation of the West Bank and the unequal treatment of Palestinians,” Timoner said.

But she argued that the same “dehumanization” that was deployed against Palestinians was also evident among people who justified or celebrated the Hamas attacks against Israel.

“The idea that only one of these people is right – It should be only for Palestine or should be only for Israel, the other people just shouldn't exist – that goes nowhere,” she said. “There's no future. The only future is a future that acknowledges that both peoples are fully human and deserving of safety and self determination and freedom and peace.”

“Some day,” she said in her sermon, “may all people see Israelis and Palestinians in their goodness, in their pain and in their full humanity, just as, at the beginning, God saw us all.”

A coalition after 9/11

For some interfaith leaders, the present moment demands that different religious communities find ways of aligning in ways that echo what took place in the post-9/11 era.

The Rev. Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, said the efforts of interfaith leaders and community activists were tested in 2010 when it was announced that a developer planned to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

The mosque and community center, known as Park51, was to be built on private property but it caused uproar and opposition among mostly conservatives, including national figures like Republicans Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, who were joined by some family members of those who were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

While opponents were able to successfully block mosques in Bay Ridge and on Staten Island, Breyer said then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg intervened in the case of Park51, lending it valuable support.

“I think he had a sense, from a Jewish background, how quickly people can turn on one another based on religion, and that that was not going to happen on his watch,” Breyer said.

Bloomberg, she noted, gave a speech on Ellis Island in support of the mosque, arguing that it was part of New York City's long tradition of religious pluralism.

"Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans,” Bloomberg said.

“We would betray our values – and play into our enemies' hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else,” he said.

One of the lasting lessons of that era, Breyer said, is that religious leaders of different backgrounds have to be in regular contact with one another so that they have meaningful relationships and are prepared for a crisis, such as now.

“What you want,” Breyer said, “is leaders from every different tradition in the neighborhood to be able to stand with each other and say these hate crimes were unacceptable because we know what happens to one affects all of us.”

Tolerating dissent

In the weeks and months ahead, the activists and interfaith leaders said it was critical for elected officials to embrace the inevitable protests and demonstrations, even if some of them cause offense.

Amol Sinha, the executive director of the ACLU in New Jersey, cited the case of Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to look into the financial ties of college student groups he alleged “have lined up to effectively cheerlead Hamas’s genocidal war against the people of Israel.”

“I think that's a dangerous slope, a slippery slope,” Sinha said. “It's at these turbulent times that speech needs to really be protected and upheld. The First Amendment and free speech rights aren't just there for times when it's convenient.”

Singh, co-founder of the Sikh Coalition, cited Newark Mayor Ras Baraka as having provided “the perfect public statement.”

On Oct. 16, Baraka said, “Newark stands with and prays for families on every side who have lost loved ones and are being traumatized daily by the horrific things the world is watching.”

“We stand against the kidnapping and murder of unarmed civilians in Israel by Hamas and we reject the indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas and the deliberate cutting off food, water and electricity to millions of residents — resulting in the deaths of innocent men, women and children,” Baraka said.

“Furthermore,” Baraka said, “we condemn using this conflict as an opportunity to target the Jewish community and further escalate antisemitism, or using it to fan the flames of rising Islamophobia and blame Palestinians and all Muslims for the acts of a few extremists. All of this is wrong.”

At present, Singh said he doesn’t think the political climate resembles the situation after the 2001 attacks. “I don't expect the mass sort of hate crimes, profiling, workplace discrimination that we saw after 9/11, where both private actors and public actors were in one form or another discriminating,” he said.

Like Singh, Ofer said that although the situation was worrisome, it was a far cry from 22 years ago.

“Maybe we will never see it,” he said, referring to a feared backlash against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians. “And that is the hope.”

“But at the same time, we've seen enough warning signs that I think it's right to be concerned,” Ofer said. “And I think it's right to begin that conversation now. Before it's too late.”