ICYMI: Nearly 25 Years After 9/11, JCRC-NY CEO Calls on New Yorkers to Reject Hate and Collective Blame

NEW YORK, NY (09/08/2026) (readMedia)-- In a powerful New York Daily News op-ed this morning, JCRC-NY CEO Mark Treyger argues that honoring those lost on 9/11 means embracing the "courage over fear and service over self" that defined New York in its aftermath. Drawing on his personal experiences, Treyger warns that the assigning of collective blame to entire communities for atrocities they did not commit, as many Muslim and Arab New Yorkers experienced after 9/11, fuels a broader machinery of hate that can lead to discrimination and violence. At a time of skyrocketing antisemitism and other forms of hate, Treyger calls on New Yorkers to build bridges across communities and stand together to combat hate in all its forms.

Read the op-ed here and below.

Nearly 25 years after Sept. 11, there are images New York will never forget: a skyline forever changed; families waiting for loved ones who would never come home; and firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other first responders running toward danger because strangers needed them. Many later died from illnesses connected to their service. We owe them a debt neither time nor words can repay.

Yet amid the smoke, fear and devastation, New Yorkers reached for one another. They did not first ask where someone came from, how they prayed or what language they spoke. They saw another human being in need and helped.

That is the New York I believe in.

But what followed also revealed how quickly fear can become something darker. Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian New Yorkers were blamed for atrocities they did not commit. Grief became suspicion, suspicion became collective blame, and neighbors became strangers in their own city.

Those two truths, the extraordinary power of solidarity, and the danger of allowing fear to become hate, have shaped my North Star throughout my life.

My grandparents survived the Holocaust and served in World War II. My parents came to America from the former Soviet Union, where they experienced antisemitism firsthand. But our history should not narrow our concern for others; it should deepen it. Knowing what happens when Jews are dehumanized strengthens my determination to ensure no community is told it does not belong.

As a teacher after 9/11, I heard Muslim and Arab students describe being called terrorists in school hallways and on the street. Later, as a Council member, I confronted Islamophobia when an Islamic center was proposed in my district and when someone plastered a building with posters calling our Muslim neighbors "terrorists."

These different histories can never be flattened into equivalence. But the machinery of hate has recognizable parts: fear becomes scapegoating and collective blame; collective blame becomes dehumanization; and dehumanization makes discrimination and violence easier to justify.

Jewish New Yorkers know that machinery painfully well.

Today, antisemitism remains an urgent threat. Jews continue to constitute more than half of reported hate-crime victims in New York City despite representing a fraction of its population. Jews have been assaulted for appearing visibly Jewish. Synagogues require extraordinary security simply to conduct ordinary religious life.

As the leader of JCRC-NY, I have an unequivocal responsibility to fight antisemitism, strengthen Jewish communal security and ensure Jewish New Yorkers can live openly, proudly and without fear.

But Jewish security is not achieved by retreating from the rest of New York. Quite the opposite.

We need strong Jewish institutions and strong relationships beyond them. We need neighbors who recognize antisemitism and stand with us when Jews are targeted, just as we must speak against hatred when others are targeted. That is why bridge-building is essential to JCRC-NY's work.

And genuine solidarity cannot be transactional. We do not stand with another community to collect a favor for later. Relationships built through years of trust become civic infrastructure that makes every community, including ours, stronger and safer.

Sept. 11 showed us both the devastating consequences of hatred and the extraordinary capacity of people to choose courage over fear and service over self.

The most meaningful tribute we can offer those we lost 25 years ago, and those who risked everything to save others, is to build a New York worthy of their courage: strong enough to confront hate, proud enough to celebrate who we are, and united enough to ensure that no community ever has to stand alone.