We enter 5787 the same week America marks twenty-five years since September 11. And sadly, it is shaping up to be a day of deep bigotry.
A quarter century on, the most durable falsehood to come out of that day is still the claim that Jews knew in advance, and it now circulates on podcasts with audiences larger than any cable network. The anniversary is also being used to cast suspicion on Muslim Americans all over again, this time on the mayor of the city that was attacked. Fighting antisemitism and refusing anti-Muslim bigotry are the aligned work, and this week shows why.
Five Israeli men were detained in New Jersey on September 11, 2001, questioned, and cleared. The FBI concluded in writing that they had no advance knowledge of the attacks. They were deported over immigration violations and never charged in connection with 9/11. That is the entire factual basis for a conspiracy theory that has run for twenty-five years.
It resurfaced this summer on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, and the phrase “Google: Dancing Israelis” still travels alongside “The Jews did 9/11.” Our breakdown of the myth is part of How Antisemitism Recruits: Five Conspiracy Theories and How They Fall Apart.
Ahead of Friday’s ceremony, victims’ families and a city council member demanded that Mayor Zohran Mamdani stay away, saying he does not belong there. He is an elected official representing the city that was attacked, and nothing recommends his absence except his name and his faith.
The years after 2001 brought a wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim suspicion that landed on people who had nothing to do with the attacks. That wave is rising again. Honoring the dead means refusing to repeat it.
Elon Musk’s America PAC has launched hundreds of anti-trans ads as part of a reported $100 million midterm spend. In 2024, a Musk-funded PAC ran ads in Michigan reminding Muslim voters that Doug Emhoff is Jewish.
The same money has already been spent on explicit antisemitism, which is why the anti-trans campaign is worth reading closely. It runs on a conspiracy theory with a familiar shape. A tiny group cast as holding enormous power. The people under attack recast as the real aggressors. The charge that they are infiltrators, passing as ordinary while working from within.
Musk closes the loop by naming George Soros as the source of a “woke mind virus” that turns children trans, which puts a Jewish financier at the center and trans people in the role of symptom.
The people attacking trans people and the people attacking Jews are often the same people telling the same story. Our full analysis is here.
Agents smashed a car window during an arrest. Told he was acting like a Nazi, the agent gave a thumbs up and said “that’s right.” Asked for his badge number, he said “6 million.” Watch it here.
Build a force to terrorize immigrant communities, recruit for it with Great Replacement fearmongering and slogans borrowed from neo-Nazis, and this is what shows up at the window.
Flyers opposing a NYCHA redevelopment project in Manhattan blame “Zionists” for the city’s housing crisis while warning in the same breath that “Talmudists are trained to cheat.” Others read “Locals vs. Rothschilds” and referred to a “NYCHA Holocaust battle.”
Deed theft and predatory real estate practices are real and deserve serious attention. Attaching them to Jews as a group does nothing for the tenants involved and revives one of the oldest stories told about us. The Times of Israel reported on the trend.
Nexus President Jonathan Jacoby spoke to the Forward about the Jewish backlash to Mamdani attending Friday’s memorial, including the ADL’s “Mamdani Monitor” and a protest flyer linking the mayor to the hijackings. He said his disagreements with the mayor on Israel “pale in the face of” the danger of authoritarianism and white nationalism.
Nexus VP of Philanthropy and Strategic Engagement Becca Israel writes in the Times of Israel that Jewish safety rests on the ordinary machinery of democracy, and that Jewish communities lose ground by pushing each other out over politics.
Nexus Task Force member David N. Myers and MPAC President Salam Al-Marayati wrote in the Los Angeles Times on what Jews and Muslims owe each other as hate against both communities rises.
This is what we do: track real antisemitism, call out when it’s weaponized, and make clear the difference. If you’d like to support this work, you can donate here. We’d love to connect.
We’ll continue offering clear responses, frameworks, and resources as these stories develop.
