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What to know about ‘Not On Our Dime,’ Zohran Mamdani’s bill targeting donations to Israeli settlements
In May 2023, a member of the New York State Assembly introduced a bill aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It was swiftly rebuked by his colleagues and never came to a vote.
That bill was called “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” and the assemblymember was democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. Now, Mamdani is an emblem of shifting sentiments against Israel — among New Yorkers and Americans nationwide — as he verges on being elected the mayor of New York City.
While “Not On Our Dime” had a short run in Albany, its specter has loomed large over the mayor’s race, particularly for Jewish New Yorkers who are wary of Mamdani because of his attitudes about Israel. Over 1,150 rabbis nationwide, including hundreds in New York City, have signed a letter warning that Jews would be stripped of their “safety and dignity” if anti-Zionism is “normalized” in the city’s halls of power.
Mamdani told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a questionnaire last week that he would prioritize his local affordability agenda as mayor. But he also did not reject the idea of enacting “Not On Our Dime”-style legislation in New York City.
“Charities and nonprofits that receive a taxpayer subsidy should not support the violation of international law, and that’s what the right-wing Israeli settlement project is doing,” said Mamdani. “An effort that goes against the stated foreign policy of our own government, going back several decades.”
Here is what “Not On Our Dime” actually said, what its supporters and critics argued, and what its implications could be for New York City under Mamdani.
What the legislation said
“Not On Our Dime” proposed amending the state’s nonprofit law to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.” Mamdani said it would stop the flow of about $60 million a year from New York-based charities to settlements deemed illegal under international law.
The bill defined “unauthorized support for Israeli settlement activity” as “aiding and abetting” any violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions by Israel or its citizens. According to the bill, this included the illegal transfer of Israelis into “occupied territory” (defined as the West Bank and East Jerusalem), acts of violence against people living in occupied territory, forced eviction and the seizure or destruction of Palestinian land or property. Mamdani did not tell JTA whether he believed that “unauthorized support” should extend to humanitarian aid for Israelis in the relevant areas.
The bill said nonprofits that spent at least $1 million in violation could be sued, fined by the state attorney general and lose their tax-exempt status. Palestinians and others who said they were harmed by a violation would also be allowed to sue the nonprofits.
“Not On Our Dime” was co-sponsored by four other democratic socialists in the Assembly — Sarahana Shrestha, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Marcela Mitaynes and Emily Gallagher — along with the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. It emerged from a campaign from left-leaning nonprofits such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the Adalah Justice Project and Jewish Voice for Peace.
The groups said on a website for the campaign that they believed nonprofits supporting Israeli settlements should be shut down. “This pioneering legislation makes explicit what is implicit–that a certain class of activities are fundamentally inconsistent with a charitable purpose, and should therefore subject an organization to dissolution,” the website said.
Mamdani told the Jewish Press, an Orthodox newspaper in New York, that he had met with those groups before proposing the legislation, which was accompanied by a state Senate version sponsored by DSA member Jabari Brisport. He also said he viewed the legislation as unlikely to prevail — but crucial to raising awareness about an important issue.
“I believe the attorney general has the jurisdiction now to pursue measures of accountability with regards to these organizations. The likelihood of that is minimal and I think that’s why there is the necessity for this legislation,” he told the newspaper at the time. “I’m under no illusion about the long journey that this legislation has to travel on. I do believe it is a critical first step to even inform New Yorkers.”
There was no precedent for a law that sought to block U.S. charities from funding Israeli settlements. Several states, including New York, have passed measures that took an opposite stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by punishing organizations that boycotted Israel.
Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s closest competitor in the mayoral race who is running as an independent, enacted one of these policies as the governor of New York. In 2016, he passed an executive order that banned state agencies from investing in companies and organizations that promoted or engaged in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Mamdani has long supported that movement, which calls for government measures to pressure Israel into withdrawing from the West Bank and granting full equality to Palestinians.
What happened when it was introduced
The legislation sparked a surge of energy among pro-Palestinian activists, with over 500 people marching in support in New York City. In Albany, Mamdani announced the bill together with pro-Palestinian activists including Rosalind Petchesky, a retired political scientist who would later feature prominently in his mayoral campaign.
Petchesky, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, told the press that “Jews are not a monolith.” She added, “We do not all support the state of Israel, we are not all Zionists, many take the position of supporting Palestinians and Palestinian human rights.”
But in the state government, backlash was quick. Democratic Assemblymembers Nily Rozic and Daniel Rosenthal — who are both Jewish, with Rosenthal since leaving for a position at UJA-Federation of New York — denounced “Not On Our Dime” in an open letter signed by 25 lawmakers. They said the bill was “a ploy to demonize Jewish charities with connections to Israel” that would “further sow divisions within the Democratic Party.”
Their letter did not mention Israeli settlements, but said that “Not On Our Dime” sought to attack Jewish groups with “missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told the Forward the bill was a “non-starter,” and it did not advance. (Two years later, Heastie endorsed Mamdani for mayor in September.)
Meanwhile, all 48 Assembly Republicans denounced the bill as “utterly vicious” in their own joint letter. “This bill seeks to penalize non-profit entities that have any affiliation with the state of Israel and is effectively an attack on Jews and Israel,” they wrote. “As Americans, we find this bill to be not only discriminatory but also deeply anti-Semitic.”
What the bill’s advocates said
Supporters of the legislation said it would cut off a major source of funding for organizations that push Palestinians out of their homes and support violent extremists. Between 2009 and 2013, private donors sent over $220 million to West Bank settlements through about 50 tax-exempt nonprofits, according to a 2015 investigation by Haaretz.
“Aiding and abetting war crimes is not charitable, period,” said Vince Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which backed the bill, in 2023. “This bill goes a long way toward ensuring that New York is not inadvertently subsidizing war crimes, but rather creating paths for accountability.”
Mamdani and other advocates rejected the idea that the bill would constrain appropriate charitable work. “Organizations, including Jewish organizations that feed the poor, provide emergency medical care and clothe orphans take up noble causes for which New York state should provide the benefits of charitable status,” he told the Jewish Press at the time. “This is why the bill does not apply to such groups. The rhetorical tactics employed by this letter to suggest otherwise is an attempt to avoid the issue at hand: settlements.”
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Mamdani and his co-sponsors relaunched “Not On Our Dime” in May 2024 as Israel and Hamas battled in Gaza, saying they would revise the bill to prohibit “aiding and abetting” Israeli resettlement of Gaza and “unauthorized support” for Israeli military actions that broke international law. Mamdani said he believed the bill had a better chance then, as it reflected “newfound consciousness in our country with regards to the urgency of Palestinian human rights.”
In fact, “Not On Our Dime” had no better prospects in Albany — but it gained traction on the national stage. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star who represents the Bronx and Queens but rarely steps into state politics, gave the bill her endorsement.
“It is more important now than ever to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for endorsing and, in fact, supporting some of this settler violence that prevents a lasting peace,” said Ocasio-Cortez at the time. Her backing, a year before she would endorse Mamdani for mayor, signaled the rising crescendo of a left wing animated by criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
What the bill’s critics said
Critics said the bill would punish Jewish organizations that provide a range of humanitarian services internationally, including to people living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Sara Forman, who leads the pro-Israel group New York Solidarity Network, called it “antisemitic and unconstitutional state-level nonsensical legislation.”
“This bogus bill, which is extremely vague, would force Jewish charities to quadruple check every penny and every cause related to Israel, tie up their time, cast suspicion on all their work, and stifle critical dollars dedicated to meaningful causes in Israel and the United States, from education to anti-poverty efforts,” Forman said in 2024.
Even some people who partly share Mamdani’s critique of the settlement movement and the Israeli government said the bill went too far.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the rabbinic human rights organization T’ruah, has herself attempted to block U.S. funding to the most violent Israeli settler groups. Since 2016, T’ruah has filed complaints with the IRS about nonprofits like the Central Fund of Israel, which funnels millions in tax-exempt donations to Israeli groups that fund militant Jewish supremacists. T’ruah’s reasoning was that leaders of these extremist organizations have been indicted or convicted of terrorism in Israel, and U.S. law prohibits sending tax-exempt donations to terrorist groups.
Mamdani specifically mentioned the Manhattan-based Central Fund of Israel during his 2023 press circuit for “Not On Our Dime.” But Jacobs opposed the bill, even as her own efforts failed to stop the flow of money to extremist groups. She said it was too broad, allowing for the possibility of targeting nonprofits beyond terrorists and groups directly involved in building settlements.
“Because of the vagueness of the language, it could potentially be construed to relate to any nonprofit that is putting the baseline of $1 million into settlements,” Jacobs said in an interview. “It could include a group that’s doing support for victims of terror, and a large percentage of them might be living over the Green Line. It could be construed to include American Friends of Hebrew University, because that’s in East Jerusalem.”
In criticizing the legislation, Jacobs referenced the Talmudic idiom “tafasta meruba lo tafasta” — or, “if you grasped too much, you did not grasp anything.”
What “Not On Our Dime” means for a Mayor Mamdani
New York City mayors have long endeavored to show support for Israel, dating back even before it became a state in 1948. In 1923, Mayor John Hylan called on New Yorkers to contribute “generous support” to a fund for building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Then as now, the city had the largest Jewish population in the world.
But this year, the mayor’s race overlapped with a war that sent opinions of Israel in the United States plunging to new lows, with images of dying Palestinian children and destruction spreading across social media and protesters, including many American Jews and New Yorkers, rallying against Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Mamdani surged in that context, winning the Democratic mayoral nomination and rocketing to fame at the same time as Israel drew its sharpest and most widespread criticism. The timing was right for Mamdani, who is 34 and formed his political identity as a young man around a cause that had never before found a champion in Gracie Mansion: Palestinian rights and independence.
He has pledged to take some actions locally to advance those views, including arresting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli leader sets foot in New York City, not investing the city’s pension funds in Israel bonds and dismantling a New York-Israel economic cooperation initiative.
Mamdani has not said he would propose legislation comparable to “Not On Our Dime” as mayor. Still, some New Yorkers concerned about his stances on Israel are asking if he would attempt a city-level version of the bill — and how that would affect their lives.
In August, a caller to WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” asked whether such legislation would penalize their synagogue for donating to Jewish emergency response groups that operate globally, including in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In an on-air interview, Lehrer relayed this question to Mamdani, who brushed off the concern.
Jacobs said that outcome would be unlikely under the legislation as it was written, given its $1 million threshold.
“I guess if there were a synagogue that was raising $1 million for a settlement, then if this bill had passed, maybe it would say that synagogue couldn’t do that. But I don’t know if that is a situation that actually exists,” she said.
Jeremy Cohan, a leader in the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, is part of the Jewish left that has strengthened Mamdani’s rise. In his own interview with Lehrer in October, Cohan articulated his understanding of “Not On Our Dime” and why he believed it would resonate with New York City voters.
“The ‘Not On Our Dime’ bill was designed to say, ‘Hey, if you’re committing violations of international law, if you’re funneling money to organizations that are committing violations of international law, that are aiming to dispossess people of their land illegally, that are complicit in war crimes, we are going to not subsidize that as New York State. New York State stands for something. We don’t stand for war crimes,’” he said.
“I do think that so much of the choice, or a decent part of the choice, facing New Yorkers is, do New Yorkers want a mayor who takes war crimes seriously, or do they want a mayor like Andrew Cuomo who defends war crimes and genocide,” Cohan continued. “I think they want a mayor who opposes war crimes and prioritizes their interests, which Zohran Mamdani will do.”
“Not On Our Dime” shows Mamdani is a politician with a track record of taking action on his beliefs, whether or not he believes he will quickly effect change. And in his victory speech after the Democratic primary, he identified himself as one of “millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas.”
He acknowledged that many in the city disagreed with his ideas and said he would seek to understand their perspectives. But in a sign of how he would hold to his views of Israel and Palestine as the mayor of New York City, he said, “I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth.”
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The post What to know about ‘Not On Our Dime,’ Zohran Mamdani’s bill targeting donations to Israeli settlements appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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J Street goes on the offensive against AIPAC-backed candidates
(JTA) — J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group, announced that it will spend $3 million to defeat a handful of Republican candidates backed by AIPAC, joining the plethora of progressive groups targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this election year.
Such an attack campaign is an unusual initiative for J Street, which typically endorses candidates but does not target opponents on the basis of an AIPAC endorsement. Until now, according to J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, the likelier scenario for his organization was finding its endorsed candidates on the defensive against AIPAC’s spending.
“It’s a new era for us,” Ben-Ami said in an interview. In 2022, J Street targeted an AIPAC backed candidate — but only after AIPAC barraged the J Street endorsed candidate with negative spending.
In a statement, J Street said that this will be the group’s largest super PAC investment in its history, referring to political action committees that can raise unlimited funds but are forbidden from coordinating with campaigns.
The $3 million will be spent on ads targeting Republican Rep. Mike Collins, who is running for U.S. Senate in Georgia against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, and a handful of incumbents: Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who is running for reelection amid allegations of domestic abuse, which he denies; Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden; Pennsylvania Rep. Ryan Mackenzie; and Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
Ben-Ami said J Street targeted those particular candidates in part because they each face competitive races as the Democrats look to take control of the House and Senate and they have ideological distance from J Street. Many of them were also connected to the movement to deny and overturn the 2020 election results, Ben-Ami said.
J Street’s campaign comes as AIPAC’s brand has become increasingly toxic among voters, and as a growing number of Democratic politicians cross its red line of supporting conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel. J Street’s position, meanwhile, has recently drifted toward supporting a phasing-out of military aid to Israel in 2028.
AIPAC blasted the campaign in a post on X. “Is this from J Street or Justice Democrats?” AIPAC wrote, referring to the progressive organization that has increasingly aligned with pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“A dark money super PAC spending millions to defeat pro-Israel candidates and lie about AIPAC,” the group wrote. “Not a word about helping elect pro-Israel candidates further exposes the difference between J Street and actual pro-Israel organizations.”
AIPAC has been a heavy spender since it launched its super PAC, United Democracy Project, ahead of the 2022 midterms, and is the top outside spender in this election cycle, according to Open Secrets. A number of anti-AIPAC, pro-Palestinian groups have emerged over the past year to counter the pro-Israel lobbying group’s spending.
Unlike those groups, J Street and AIPAC have some overlap in which candidates they back: Both groups endorsed moderate, pro-Israel Democrats such as Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Dan Goldman. J Street’s super PAC has also previously targeted individual candidates for their AIPAC endorsement, such as Rep. Haley Stevens in 2022, citing AIPAC’s donations from right-wing megadonors.
An AIPAC spokesperson wrote that it is “disappointing, but not surprising, that J Street continues to amplify lies about our community.”
“AIPAC members are focused on helping elect Democrats and Republicans who will strengthen the U.S.-Israel partnership, while J Street is focused on turning support for the Jewish state into a partisan political football,” said AIPAC’s spokesperson.
Ben-Ami said this year’s campaign is not about “the relationship between us and AIPAC,” but is rather about emboldening candidates who may otherwise worry that they will be up against AIPAC’s war chest.
“We are very conscious that there are many candidates who are afraid of what AIPAC might be able to do politically, and therefore adopt positions and say things about policy because they are afraid, and their fear and intimidation is holding them back,” Ben-Ami said.
Now, he said, J Street is putting “the shoe on the other foot.”
“If you are going to oppose American democracy and provide carte blanche to this Israeli government, then you need to be afraid,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post J Street goes on the offensive against AIPAC-backed candidates appeared first on The Forward.
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Germany’s far-right AfD, riding state win, targets more gains in elections from east to west
(JTA) — Germany’s far-right, riding high after winning an eastern state, seeks to capitalize on its momentum in a series of upcoming elections — starting with municipal voting this weekend, followed by two closely watched state contests.
The first test for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party comes Sunday in municipal elections in the western state of Lower Saxony. A week later, the AfD has its sights on state elections in the capital, Berlin, and the Baltic coast state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The AfD beat out other parties in Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6 with 43.8% of the vote and 39 of 83 state parliament seats, falling just short of a majority and marking Germany’s greatest far-right victory in a state election since World War II.
“From previous elections, we know that the AfD is currently able to mobilize almost totally its own constituency and potential voters, while its democratic competitors have much more problems,” said Gideon Botsch, the head of the Emil Julius Gumbel Research Unit on Antisemitism and Right-Wing Extremism at Potsdam University.
While polls do not predict the next state election results will match the historic win in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD currently leads other parties in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with about 35% of the vote. And in Berlin, long a stronghold of Germany’s political left, the AfD is jockeying with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the left-wing Linke for first place, with all three polling around 20%.
The AfD, a nationalist, anti-immigrant party whose leaders have proposed rejecting Germany’s “guilt complex” over the Holocaust, has regularly topped nationwide opinion polls for the past year. In surveys asking Germans which party they would choose if federal elections were held “this Sunday,” the AfD often receives the highest results, Botsch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The AfD has built a dedicated and growing base, said Botsch. Its popularity signals frustration with the mainstream parties in power, particularly the CDU, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, amid a sluggish economy. The AfD is especially popular in eastern Germany, where voters are poorer and hit hard by high energy prices exacerbated by the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
The AfD is likely to perform more weakly in the west, where Lower Saxony will hold a municipal election on Sunday. The party has stronger influence in the east, and Germany’s municipal elections tend to hinge more on well-known figures from established parties, said Roger Stöcker, a political scientist at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg. Still, even if the AfD doesn’t transform governments, Stöcker said that making inroads to further entrench itself in Lower Saxony would be “a strategically significant success.”
“It’s conceivable that the AfD wins a town hall or a county administration here and there or strengthens its presence in local councils, expanding its local base,” said Stöcker.
The three upcoming elections are being closely watched for signs of the AfD’s wider-scale momentum, said Daniel Schuster, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European office.
“Taken together, these elections can help show whether Saxony-Anhalt was an exceptionally strong eastern result or part of a broader national expansion of the AfD’s electoral base,” said Schuster.
Remko Leemhuis, the director of the American Jewish Committee Berlin Lawrence and Lee Ramer Institute for German-Jewish Relations, added that residents will feel the effects of the AfD’s success even if it falls short of its victory in Saxony-Anhalt. A “very strong AfD result,” short of managing to enter government coalitions, would still “raise serious concerns” for Jewish residents about the party’s influence, said Leemhuis.
Residents in Saxony-Anhalt are waiting to see the ramifications of the AfD’s election victory. Without an outright majority, the party needs partners to join a coalition. Its nationalist agenda in the region includes teaching children less about Hitler, banning Pride flags in public buildings and requiring artists and cultural organizations to sign a declaration that they will not “disparage Germany and its culture” if they seek state funding.
State governments also control domestic policing and parts of the judiciary. The AfD could use its power in these areas to “put pressure on minorities it dislikes,” including immigrants, Muslims and Jews who are identified with Holocaust remembrance, said Stöcker. At the same time, the AfD could direct policing and intelligence away from right-wing extremism in Saxony-Anhalt, which recorded the second-highest number of right-wing extremist crimes per capita of Germany’s 16 states last year, Leemhuis said.
The AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt marked a “watershed moment” in German politics, according to Roland Abold, the managing director of Infratest Dimap, a German election research institute. Abold said that the result heaped pressure on Merz and the federal government, as “calls for a change in political direction and a reassessment of cooperation with the AfD are likely to intensify.”
The CDU for now is standing behind Merz, the most unpopular chancellor in modern German history after 16 months in power. But if the CDU faces further heavy defeats in the upcoming elections, questions about Merz as the party’s leader could escalate, said Stöcker.
The AfD already has its eyes on his job. Alice Weidel, the national AfD’s co-chair, announced on Monday that she wants the party to win “at least 40% of the vote” in Germany’s next federal election in 2029.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt who hopes to become the state premier, said in the same press conference that his goal was “very clear.”
“As perhaps the next Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt, I need a Federal Chancellor Alice Weidel here in Berlin, so that we can write here history side by side,” said Siegmund.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Germany’s far-right AfD, riding state win, targets more gains in elections from east to west appeared first on The Forward.
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I was born after 9/11. I still carry the memories of that day.
Earlier this week, I was talking with my mother over the phone about her experience on 9/11. She walked me through the familiar parts — how she was in our Upper West Side apartment when she learned about the attacks from a relative, how she went to the garage to get the car so they could drive to a friend’s house upstate once she realized the attacks were acts of terror. There were still hijacked planes in the air, and she worried New York City might be targeted again. Then, she said, “This part is going to make me cry.”
I hadn’t remembered what came next, but suddenly it came back to me. “Oh no, me too,” I said.
While she waited for my father to come back uptown from his office in the Financial District, she stopped inside a fire station across from the garage. Inside was a lone firefighter, who’d stayed behind to man the station while the rest of his company was inside the towers. He was watching the news on television, and my mom stood next to him, watching too, when the towers fell.
“We just lost so many men,” he said.
I wasn’t there when it happened; I wasn’t even alive. But I’d heard this story before, I’d walked dozens of times past that same fire station, which now has a plaque commemorating the seven firefighters who died on 9/11. Hearing the story again on the phone, I found myself walking down the streets of Washington D.C., bawling.
I’m 23, born a year-and-a-half after 9/11. Most Americans my age learned about the attacks in school, as history. I’m part of the 16% who learned through family or friends.
The discovery happened by accident, when I was in kindergarten. My mom and I were in a children’s store on the Upper West Side, when we started flipping through a picture book about the history of New York City. Most of the book was unremarkable, but the end was unexpected: a scene of the smoldering twin towers.
I forget what exactly happened next, but here’s what I do remember: My mom was upset that the shop hadn’t provided a warning about the book’s end, and I was confused about why she was upset. I was five, too young to understand the image and never one to let a question go unanswered; I must have pestered her until she offered up an explanation.
She hadn’t been prepared to tell me about terrorism. She’d been evading the topic for some time, telling half-truths to avoid it. When I’d ask her why we had to take our shoes off in line at the airport, she’d just say it was to make sure no one had anything dangerous, leaving out the part about how a man had tried to get on a flight with bombs hidden in his shoes.
“9/11 is a huge thing for a parent to have to tell a kid about,” my mom told me this week. “You were a happy kid, and I didn’t want you to get scared or traumatized.”
The events, and impacts, of that day slowly unfolded for me as the years passed. I learned that my father had watched from Battery Park as the South Tower fell; he ran westward as plumes of smoke billowed toward him. I learned that my parents had friends who’d died in the towers, one of whom was the father of a boy I grew up with. I remember going to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum when it opened in 2014, feeling sick as I watched footage of people jumping out of the towers.
The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of Gen Z Americans about 9/11. I was struck by how disconnected many felt from the event. “It’s hard to feel sad about something that you don’t remember,” said Annika Heegaard, a 25-year-old now living in New York.
But for me, 9/11 doesn’t feel quite so far away. By now I’ve lived through other mass casualty events, like the Parkland shooting and the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. But 9/11 is the only tragedy that my family members had such a direct connection to. “It was devastating,” my mom said.
I think the reason I can remember the exact moment I found out about 9/11 is because it changed my view of the world. I remember being almost unable to comprehend that anyone would do what the hijackers did. I wasn’t, as my mom feared, traumatized by learning about the attacks; I didn’t fear for my safety each day. But the knowledge was in some ways a loss of innocence — a discovery that people could do awful things and that the world wasn’t as safe a place as I had assumed.
The post I was born after 9/11. I still carry the memories of that day. appeared first on The Forward.
