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.”
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…
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