Le Moyne College

Syracuse, New York

Dear President LeMura,

We write on behalf of the Steering Committee of the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network (GHSCN), an international network of more than 800 scholars and practitioners in genocide and Holocaust studies, to express our profound alarm at your statement condemning the remarks made by Mosab Abu Toha during his recent appearance at Le Moyne College. Your statement not only disparages an internationally acclaimed, prize-winning writer and witness but also advances claims that misrepresent our field’s basic terms of scholarly inquiry as well as legal distinctions codified in international law.

As scholars of genocide, we must state plainly that “genocide” is a legal, historical, and analytical concept. Its application may be debated, but the term is not in itself hateful speech. It is especially troubling to suggest so in the present case, where questions concerning genocidal acts are the subject of ongoing international legal proceedings and the destruction of Gaza continues. Indeed, to suggest that applying the word genocide to the conduct of one state is itself evidence of bigotry implausibly places that state beyond the reach of legal (and scholarly) scrutiny. No nation-state can be exempt in principle from scrutiny under international law or scholarly analysis. Although the International Court of Justice has not yet made a definitive determination, scholarly experts, human rights organizations, and an independent UN Commission led by the distinguished jurist Navi Pallay have all come to the conclusion that acts of genocide have been perpetrated in Gaza.

Your statement also conflates criticism of state conduct with antisemitic hostility. First, this is not a defensible basis on which to condemn a survivor’s testimony. Mr. Abu Toha testifies to the destruction of his family and community and describes that destruction using a framework recognized in scholarship and codified in international law. His essays in the New Yorker magazine recounting his experiences and those of his family were awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. For a college president to publicly censure such testimony is deeply chilling. Second, the implication that the primary issue at stake is emotional injury to Jewish community members presumes that they are “hurt” by the application of international law to the state of Israel. This deeply problematic premise aligns Jewish identity with state violence and ignores the diversity of Jewish ethical and political positions. To do so does not protect Jewish community members but risks reproducing precisely the kind of collective stereotyping long associated with antisemitism.

If the use of the term genocide can itself be treated as evidence of bigotry, then not only a survivor’s testimony but also entire domains of scholarship and jurisprudence are placed under suspicion. That is an extraordinary and dangerous proposition for an educator to make. Leaders of academic institutions have a special responsibility to stand up for scholarly and legal standards.

We urge you to withdraw your statement, apologize to Mr. Abu Toha, publicly attest that use of the term genocide does not constitute antisemitism, and reaffirm that Le Moyne College remains committed to the freedom of invited speakers — including and especially survivors of political violence — to speak without institutional denunciation.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Stef Craps, Professor of English Literature and Director of the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative, Ghent University

Debórah Dwork, Director, Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity, Graduate Center–CUNY

Amos Goldberg, The Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Atina Grossmann, Distinguished Professor of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cooper Union

Marianne Hirsch, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies, Columbia University

Brett Ashley Kaplan, Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Nadim Khoury, Associate Professor of Law, Philosophy, and International Studies, University of Inland Norway

Shira Klein, Associate Professor and Chair of History, Chapman University

Eric Kurlander, Professor of History and Director of Jewish Studies, Stetson University

Armen T. Marsoobian, Professor of Philosophy and Human Rights, Southern Connecticut State University & the University of Connecticut, Human Rights Institute

Milica Popović, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Culture Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Michael Rothberg, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Holocaust Studies, UCLA

Elyse Semerdjian, Kaloosdian-Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies, Clark University

Barry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Wake Forest University

Johanna Ray Vollhardt, Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies program, Clark University

Emina Zoletic, PhD researcher, Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw

For the Steering Committee of the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network

To put that in perspective, while thousands of tons of ammunition move freely, Gaza’s hospitals are running on empty. If the U.S. administration had both interest and power to save human lives in Gaza, here is what they could address:

🚨The Basics of Survival: Nearly half of all insulin, blood pressure, and asthma medications are gone. People are gasping for air or falling into diabetic shock without help.

🚨The Impossible Choice: 70% of cancer drugs have vanished. Doctors are being forced to stop treatment and tell patients there’s nothing more they can do.

🚨Surgery Without Relief: There is a desperate shortage of anesthesia and painkillers. Surgeries are being performed without the bare essentials—no sutures, no sterile gauze, no relief.

🚨The Most Vulnerable: Specialized milk for infants and antibiotics for children are almost impossible to find.

🚨Life on the Line: Dialysis and transplant patients are watching their life-sustaining supplies hit zero.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And please stop sending weapons to Israel. Enough of war crimes.

This is deeply shameful. I cannot believe what I am reading.

How dare you tell a person who survived a genocide that they cannot speak about it?

On April 15, I had the honor of visiting and speaking at Le Moyne College. I spoke about my lived experience in Gaza, shared the family trees of those killed by Israel, and read my poems. I also played the actual recordings of Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling that I documented myself while on the ground in Gaza.

This morning, the President of the college sent out an email condemning my use of the word GENOCIDE when describing these crimes. She claimed that using that word is "antisemitic." She stated that she recognized the "real hurt" that the word caused to Jewish students.

Seriously? Are the crimes of the Israeli state representative of all Jewish people? I personally refuse to believe that is the case.

It is utterly ridiculous to begin a letter by stating that your institution welcomes the "free exchange of ideas," only to immediately condemn a speaker, not for sharing abstract ideas, but for sharing his own life. I still carry the physical wounds of a 2009 airstrike on my neck, my forehead, and my cheek. My wife and I have lost over one hundred relatives, most of them children. Some of them have still not been buried.

Who are these students you are talking about? Not a single person who identified themselves as Jewish approached me after my talk to offer condolences or acknowledge the actual crimes committed against me and my family. I never once used the word "Jewish" during the entire event; I refuse to conflate the faith of Judaism with the actions of Israel.

Yet, you suggest my language caused "hurt." Whoever went to your office to complain about my words should have been the first to approach the stage to show humanity and support for a survivor.

It may surprise you to know that I used the word GENOCIDE to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza long before most human rights organizations, including prominent Israeli organizations, and leading Holocaust and Genocide scholars arrived at the same conclusion. I hope this fact does not "hurt" anyone even more.

If anyone told you they felt "hurt" because I used the word GENOCIDE, then I ask you: how should I feel? How should my wife feel after losing her father? How should my three children feel after losing their grandfather?

At a time when a GENOCIDE should be condemned, it is the survivors and those who speak out against it who are being targeted instead.

SHAME!!!!!

Today, I had a dream that I was teaching in a classroom. The students were your classmates from 7th grade when I taught you all back in 2021. I asked a question and waited a few seconds. No one raised their hand. And then—I started to weep.

I wept because I realized you were no longer with us. I knew that if you were there, you would’ve raised your hand before I even finished the question, a smile on your face.

I asked your classmates if they knew what happened to you. They all said, “Yes.”

I’m writing this to you, Hatem, from Syracuse, in upstate New York—the same city where I lived when you used to call me in the fall of 2022, asking, “When are you coming back? Will you be my teacher again when you return?”

Read more

Islam Abd Alhadie:
I want to visit my twin sons—Hamza and Sameh—the most precious souls I had. 💔😭
I miss them deeply.
They were buried, but

I never got to see their bodies.
I didn’t hug them. I didn’t kiss them goodbye. 💔😭
I was injured and in a coma.
They left… and left me behind.

Hanaa (about her husband):
I want to visit the grave of my beloved soulmate, A’ed.
I want to talk to him, tell him what life has been like since he left, greet him, and embrace his grave.

Read more

Icarus did not fall in the sea.

Read more

By Mosab Abu Toha

June 12, 2025

On May 15th, from our home in Syracuse, New York, my wife, Maram, and I video-called her family in Beit Lahia, the city in northern Gaza where we both grew up. They were eating a small meal of plain white rice. “That’s the only type of food we’ve had for weeks,” her father, whom I call Uncle Jaleel, said. On a normal day, a similar quantity of rice would have fed about two people, but, for seventy-five days, Israel had not allowed any trucks of food into Gaza. This meal would have to feed Maram’s parents and four of her adult siblings. I could see some plates and a bowl nearby. “They have nothing in them,” Uncle Jaleel said. “We let ourselves imagine there is salad and some chicken and pickles as we chew the rice.”

Read more

but there are no seats, no mourners,

no bodies. In the caskets are nothing

but what remained of the

dead’s clothes,

and on the wall is a clock

that has not moved for twelve months.

Read more

🔴Northern Gaza Strip (4 people killed):

4 people got killed in an air strike Mehjez family house on Haifa Street in Jabalia al-Balad. Known names are Mohammad Mehjez and his son Motasem and Mohammad’s brother, Tareq.

🔴Gaza City (40 people killed):

🔻16 people got killed in the al-Gharabli family massacre after Israel bombed a building on al-Basatin Street in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood east of Gaza City. Among them were:

- Ghada al-Gharabli and her three daughters:

- Hanin Rami al-Gharabli

- Jana Rami al-Gharabli

- Siwar Rami al-Gharabli

- Iman al-Gharabli (Ghada’s sister) and her two daughters:

- Rozan Sameh al-Gharabli

- Batoul Sameh al-Gharabli

- Madeleine al-Gharabli (Ghada’s daughter-in-law) and her daughter

- Ghada Tariq al-Gharabli (named after her grandmother)

- Shaza Darwish (Ghada’s daughter-in-law)- and her daughter:

-Sham Taher al-Gharabli

🔻11 people got killed after Israel bombed two apartments belonging to the Sultan and Batsh families, near Roundabout 17 west of Gaza City. Among them were:

--Director of the Indonesian Hospital, Dr. Marwan Sultan, his wife, and his daughter

--Journalist Muhammad Imad al-Sultan, and several members of his family.

🔻Two people got killed in the air strike near al-Majdal School in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood, south of the city:

- Farouk Daloul

- someome from Azzam family

🔻Three peope got killed in a drone strike on civilians near the Tamraz station on al-Nafaq Street, east of Gaza City.

--Wael and Bahaa al-Masharawi and a child.

🔻5 peope got killed in an air strike on a tent on al-Sina'a Street, south of the city:

- Muhammad Ashour Manoun

- Ahmad Yahya al-Batsh

- Hussein Khader Abu Jabal

- Khalil Issa Abu Jabal

- Shaima Hamouda

🔻3 people got killed in an air strike on a tent next to al-Dahyan School on al-Jalaa Street, Sheikh Radwan Intersection.

🔴Central Gaza Strip (28 people killed):

🔻16 people got killed in an air strike on a group of civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Another group near Al-Awda Hospital was also targeted. They are:

- Atiya Ismail Kabaja

- Walid Mustafa Salem

- Reem Mustafa Salem

- Mahmoud Muhammad Mahmoud Matar

- Jamil Mustafa Afana

- Muhammad Akif Al-Sanea

- Youssef Ahmed Al-Ajmi

- Mahmoud Sameh Hassan Al-Zawaragha

- Alaa Youssef Abdul Majeed Abu Safiya

- Hassan Adel Muhammad Joda

- Abdul Rahman Ismail Zayed Abu Atwi

- Ishaq Musa Ismail Matar

- Reem Musa Shahdah Al-Hour

- Ahmed Maher Abdul Rahman Taym

- Youssef Sayed Abu Labda

- Youssef Muhammad Nabhan

🔻7 people were shot dead by the occupation forces while waiting for aid near the Wadi Gaza Bridge, south of the Netzarim axis. Among them were identified:

- Kamal Yahya Abu Huwaidi

- Shaher Abdel Qader Muhammad Asmamah

- Murid Abu Khadura

🔻5 people killed in an air strike on civilians on Al-Barakah Street, south of Deir al-Balah. They are:

- Murshid Muhammad Murshid

- Mira Abdel Hadi Mohieddin Bashir

- Sabah Abdel Hadi Mohieddin Bashir

- Farouk Sami Khattab

- Alaa Ibrahim Hassan Yassin

🔴Southern Gaza Strip (52 martyrs)

🔻12 people got killed in air strikes on different tents and homes in Al-Mawasi:

(Abu Ta'ima family tent)

- Adel Abdel-Rahman Muhammad Abu Ta'ima (father)

- Heila Abdel-Latif Nasrallah Al-Brim (mother)

- Dhareefa Adel-Abdel Rahman Abu Ta'ima (daughter)

- Abdel-Latif Adel Abu Ta'ima (son)

- Heila Abdel-Latif Nasrallah Abu Ta'ima (Abdel Latif’s child/named after her grandmother)

- Waad Tayseer Saleh Abu Ta'ima (Abdel Latif’s wife and Heila’s mother)

(House bombing)

- Ahmed Khaled-Abdel Rahman Abu Shamala

- Raghad Ashraf Hassan Abu Shamala

- Heba Muhammad Abdullah Abu Salah (sister)

- Aya Muhammad Abdullah Abu Salah (sister

- Muhammad Talal Hamdan Abu Al-Ela

- Abdul Rahman Muhammad Jamil Al-Amoudi

Note: Heba’s and Aya’s sister was killed months ago. He name was Shirin.

🔻9 peope got killed in Israeli air strikes on various areas in Khan Yunis. Their names are:

- Moaz Nafez Suleiman Al-Jaab

- Hamouda Muhammad Mahmoud Al-Balbisi

- Ibrahim Abdul Moneim Ibrahim Maqdad

- Yousef Nasser Yousef Maqdad

- Muhammad Nahed Awiti Jarghon

- Tariq Ahmad Hamdan Brika (brother)

- Jihad Ahmad Muhammad Brika (brother)

- Ahmed Jihad Mustafa Abu Ali - Al-Qarara

- Munir Abdul Rahman Mufleh Al-Shaqra

🔻6 peope were killed in an air strike on a tent on Al-Istable Street in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis.

- Bilal Abdul Rahim Abu Asi (father)

- His wife Nidaa Abu Asi (mother)

- Suhaib Bilal Abu Asi (son)

- Aboud Bilal Abu Asi (son)

- Khaled Bilal Abu Asi (son)

- Asid Bilal Abu Asi (son)

🔻 5 people got killed in the vicinity of the aid center in the Al-Shakoush and Al-Tina Street areas, north of Rafah. They are:

- Ahmed Abdel Rahman Ahmed Khattab

- Abdullah Ashraf Ahmed Abu Hilal

- Ramzi Riyad Ramadan Al-Jabri

- Saeed Ziad Subhi Al-Faqawi

- Sami Akram Abdullah Al-Rakhawi

🔻10 people got killed and 75 injured in air strikes on those waiting for aid near the Al-Talhiya roundabout, east of Khan Yunis.

🔻Three people succumbed totheir wounds from previous attacks:

- Wissam Yousef Muhammad Adwan

- Mahmoud Ahmed Hassan Al-Bayouk

- Jamalat Muhammad Mustafa Barbakh

🔻 3 people got killed in an air strike on a tent in the Al-Buraq area in Mawasi Khan Yunis:

- Bilal Muhammad Juma Abu Rizq

- Hassan Shehdeh Hussein Abu Rizq

- Muhammad Suleiman Ahmad Abu Rizq

🔻2 people got killed in eastern Khan Yunis:

- Saleh Muhammad Abu Hamed (brother)

- Iyad Muhammad Abu Hamed (brother)

🔻 2 people’s bodies were recovered from the town of Ma'an, east of Khan Yunis:

- Ahmed Muhammad Muhammad Abu Khater

- Alaa Muhammad Suleiman Abu Khater