NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch pointedly called Wednesday for “moral clarity” ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — decrying revisionists who blur the lines between heroes and terrorists.
Tisch made the remarks before a stone-faced Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other NYPD and city officials as they unveiled a new 9/11 Memorial Wall at One Police Plaza.
The wall – which includes 469 new names, commemorating NYPD members who have died of Ground Zero-related illnesses – preserves the unfathomable devastation from the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the heroism in response, Tisch said.
“Preserving that history also means preserving its moral clarity,” she said, addressing an audience of 9/11 first responders’ families.
“The men who attacked this city were terrorists. The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes,” she said.
“Twenty-five years cannot be allowed to blur that distinction and shame on those who do.”
The usually straight-shooting top cop left the specific culprits unclear. But the open-to-interpretation condemnation nonetheless set tongues wagging, particularly as Mamdani – both the Big Apple’s first socialist and first Muslim mayor – leads the city through a politically fractious run-up to the terror attacks’ quarter-century anniversary on Friday.
Several lefties in Mamdani’s orbit have come under fire for their views on the attacks, notably online personality Hasan Piker, who previously said that “America deserved 9/11.” Piker has since walked back his 2019 comments, saying that he meant US actions in the Middle East have a boomerang effect.
And just days before Tisch’s remarks, she found herself smack in the middle of a controversy as Mamdani – fresh off signing an executive order recognizing 9/11 – asked her to hand a ceremonial pen to his chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, a civil rights attorney who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist.
Three attendees at the NYPD ceremony told The Post they snickered when Tisch made her remarks on “moral clarity,” and perceived it as a dig.
“It definitely sounded like she took a shot at the mayor, especially after the pen incident last week,” said one attendee.
Mamdani, for his part, didn’t flinch as Tisch made her remarks.
NYPD officials didn’t clarify at whom Tisch’s remarks were pointed, when pressed by The Post.
A source close to Tisch pushed back against interpretations that she aimed her comments directly at the mayor.
“It is, I think, much more generally about the politicization of 9/11,” the insider said.
Several anti-Mamdani pols, however, also seemed to decode Tisch’s remarks as a swipe against the mayor.
“Good work by commissioner Jessica Tisch here,” Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) posted on X.
Paladino is among a vocal set of New Yorkers – including a set of 9/11 families, GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and ex-Gov. George Pataki – who’ve called for Mamdani to skip the 25th anniversary memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.
Those calls have been blasted as Islamophobic, including by some of Paladino’s own colleagues.
“The reason people are attacking Zohran Mamdani & objecting to his presence at 9/11 ceremony is because he is Muslim,” Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) posted on X.
“This bigotry from Blakeman, Giuliani and others is disgusting.”
Some X users noted that Tisch’s remarks could easily be interpreted as condemning Mamdani’s critics.
“TISCH: ‘We must speak with moral clarity against [LACK OF CLARITY COMMENCES] those people who confuse the heroes with the terrorists,’ a self-described Democratic Socialist X user posted.
One X user summed up the confusion by jokingly putting himself in the mayor’s shoes.
“[Zohran thinking] ‘Wait, is she defending me or scolding me?'” the user sniped.
Mamdani and Tisch have acknowledged made their many disagreements over Israel and public safety, but have publicly presented a mostly united front.
Both later participated together in a briefing covering security preparations for the attacks’ 25th anniversary.
Mamdani later also attended the FDNY’s official September 11 25th anniversary commemoration at the Staten Island FerryHawks stadium, to honor the 343 heroes who died that day.
He notably did not speak during the ceremony, sources said, after getting booed during an NYPD event on Staten Island last month.
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