The New York Times published an article dealing with what it called the "painful" conditions experienced by Muslims in the United States following the attack of the Palestinian resistance on Israel on the seventh of last October.
Journalist Rosina Ali began her article by recalling the statement made by US President Joe Biden when he landed in Tel Aviv after the attack, describing what happened as not just "September 11 / Israeli / September", but an attack equivalent to "15 incidents like September 11", referring to the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, which he accused al-Qaeda of committing.
According to the article, the attack was "brutal and shocked a nation and changed the course of its history." American officials, critics and companies quickly rallied around Israel in its war on the Gaza Strip. In just the first week of the war, Israel dropped more bombs on Gaza than the United States dropped on Afghanistan in a year.
In the United States, it is as if the country has turned back the clock two decades, but not in the way that President Joe Biden, "who has sounded the alarm by declaring unwavering support for Israel," suggests.
Rosina said she had not heard many Muslims and Arabs in the United States, even under former President Donald Trump, feel isolated, saying the lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had apparently been forgotten.
It brought to mind evidence of the attacks, harassment and violence against Muslims and Arabs in America following these attacks, even by official state agencies. Many members of the country's Muslim community now fear new violence targeting them.
Days after the attacks on Israel, the Biden administration announced that law enforcement officers across the country were "closely monitoring" threats associated with these events.
No one expected that the first hate crime would be the killing of the 6-year-old American Muslim child Wadih al-Fayoumi against the backdrop of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, in which a man named Joseph Zoba was accused.
In a sermon during the child's funeral, Imam Omar Suleiman asked, "Didn't we learn anything from September 11? Do we really want to live those dark years again?" , meaning the fallout from the 2001 attacks.
Rosina answers these questions by saying "maybe" because those "dark" years are not far away, as incidents like the one suffered by Wadih seem to "heal a wound that has almost healed."
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, the link between Islam and terrorism in the American imagination seems to be evident once again in the images of masked men carrying out "horrific" executions, and in the Islamic State's recruitment of young Westerners.
Those long-standing "doubts" are now seeping into the public debate again about showing American support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
The false relationship between support for civilians in Gaza and Hamas's so-called "terrorist" acts is evident in U.S. public institutions, such as college campuses and workplaces, where people are subjected to reprisals for expressing support for Palestinians, which is misinterpreted as anti-Israel or pro-Hamas.
According to Rosina, the repression of freedom of expression in terms of its scope as demonstrated on social media platforms, the banning of Gaza-related posts, and the blocking of Instagram accounts were so troubling that Human Rights Watch began documenting it.