Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wraps up his poetry reading at ArtRage Gallery with a Q&A session, where he discussed the history of violence in Palestine, its correlation with colonialism, and his hope for the new generation to make a better future. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central Current

Le Moyne College invited Mosab Abu Toha, a Pulitzer-prize winning Palestinian poet, to speak on campus, then issued a statement condemning the words he spoke.

In an email issued Tuesday by Le Moyne President Linda LeMura implied Abu Toha, who is not named anywhere in the email, had committed an act of antisemitism by using the word “genocide” while describing his own experiences in Gaza.

In her letter, which appears below this story and in this link, she wrote that community members had brought to her attention the impact of the use of the word “genocide.”

“I recognize the profound historical weight this term carries for the Jewish people and the real hurt its use can cause,” LeMura wrote.

The email does not reference Abu Toha’s experiences, his international acclaim or the words “Palestine” or “Gaza.” 

LeMura did not reply to a Central Current reporter’s multiple requests for comment on Wednesday afternoon.

“Le Moyne College is committed to the free exchange of ideas that is central to our academic mission,” wrote Joe Della Posta, Le Moyne’s director of college and presidential communications. “That mission is also grounded in our values including cura personalis, the Jesuit principle of caring for the whole person. We seek to maintain genuine dialogue and respect for humanity as we engage across diverse perspectives in pursuit of learning and understanding.”

In an interview with Central Current, Abu Toha excoriated LeMura for the email, which he said amounts to a “two-level denial” of the reality in Palestine.

“To deny that there is a genocide, and then to deny me my right as a survivor and a witness and a victim to talk about it,” Abu Toha said, “and describe it in the terms that I feel right — and also, what international experts, including Israeli Holocaust and genocide experts, have used.”

Born in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, Abu Toha in 2023 received an MFA in poetry from Syracuse University, and has since earned international renown for his essays and poems. Abu Toha’s writings provide an unflinching view of life under Israeli occupation, both before and after Oct. 7, 2023. Since that day, Abu Toha has used his platform to document the victims — including more than 100 of his own relatives — of the Israeli military’s bombs, bullets, and blockade of food, water, and other humanitarian aid.

A United Nations commission, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, International Federation for Human Rights, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and dozens of sovereign nations have each concluded that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

To Abu Toha, LeMura’s chosen omissions are more telling than his own word choice, which aligns with his personal experiences and a growing consensus among genocide scholars and the international community. 

“Is there anything called Gaza? Is there anything called refugees?” Abu Toha said. “Is there anything called occupation, anything called Palestine?”

LeMura’s email treats the topic at hand “as if genocide exists in a vaccuum,” Abu Toha said.

“For me as a Palestinian, the genocide has not only started in 2023, but also in 1948, when Israel expelled about a million Palestinians, many of whom still live in refugee camps,” Abu Toha said. “So 78 years right now, and so that college president… literally obliterated an entire history of the Palestinian people.”

Abu Toha’s writing frequently depicts his own firsthand accounts of Israeli violence in Gaza, including a 2009 Israeli airstrike that injured and permanently scarred Abu Toha. Soon after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Israel bombed Abu Toha’s house to rubble, prompting him to lead his family out of Gaza. When they reached the border, Israeli forces detained Abu Toha for days, during which he said Israeli soldiers blindfolded, tortured and interrogated him while accusing him of supporting Hamas.

Abu Toha has painstakingly charted out how Israel’s scorched-earth tactics have killed entire Palestinian family trees; a similar effort by Al Jazeera found that Israel had killed 902 entire families in Gaza as of October, 8, 2024. In Jan. 2026, Al Jazeera updated the number of family bloodlines Israel had wiped out to 2,700 entire families.

“Whatever you saw were just the number of families who were killed, but you haven’t seen the names,” Abu Toha said. “You haven’t seen the ages or the professions of the people and families who were killed.”

Abu Toha’s efforts to chronicle the sheer expanse of Israel’s destruction of entire Palestinian families continue to this day. Before and after his interview with Central Current, Abu Toha was working on tracing out another family tree.

“It’s for a family that was killed just a few hours after we moved to the refugee camp on Oct. 12, 2023,” Abu Toha said. “I wrote about leaving Beit Lahia and staying with relatives in the Jabalia refugee camp, which is now erased. But a few hours after we entered the house in the Jabalia refugee camp, Israel bombed a residential building, and it killed about 30 people.”

Abu Toha began his April 15 lecture at Le Moyne with a presentation of some of these family trees, before he read selected poems to the students in attendance. The poet also played audio recordings of Israeli airstrikes he recorded.

“I showed a family tree of a cousin of my father. Thirty members of his family were killed, including a first cousin of mine, with her disabled husband and their five children,” Abu Toha said. “So the reason I did that was because it was an introduction to my poems. Some of them were about the wiping out of families,” Abu Toha said.

Abu Toha said that LeMura should apologize to the people of Gaza and Palestine, apologize individually to him and apologize to the students who attended and engaged with Abu Toha’s lecture. 

“She has to apologize for the victims of the genocide in Gaza, for denying that there is a genocide happening. And she has to apologize to me, to me as an individual who has been erased from her letter,” Abu Toha said. “I’m not any speaker. I’m a writer and survivor of the genocide. I still have scars on my body from an air strike.”

Abu Toha also called on LeMura to apologize to the students and faculty members who came to his lecture to “bear witness” to his story. Abu Toha said that LeMura’s email and its implication that the event was antisemitic insulted him, and also by extension insulted those who chose to attend.

In a Substack post about the email, Abu Toha said that he did not use the word “Jewish,” and rejected LeMura’s apparent conflation of Judaism with the state of Israel.

“Seriously? Are the crimes of the Israeli state representative of all Jewish people? I personally refuse to believe that is the case,” Abu Toha wrote.

Since Abu Toha posted a response to LeMura’s email on social platforms, the incident is gaining more attention, with Abu Toha’s supporters calling on Le Moyne’s executive to retract her assertions about Abu Toha and Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people.

On Wednesday, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned LeMura’s letter and called on LeMura to apologize, recant her statement, and learn from Palestinians “who have experienced firsthand the reality of Israel’s genocide.”

“President LeMura’s letter condemning a genocide survivor for describing what he and other Palestinians experienced at the hands of Israel as a genocide is deeply insulting,” said Afaf Nasher, executive director at CAIR-NY. “There are few things more immoral than attacking the victims of a genocide while doing nothing to oppose or condemn the perpetrator.”

Abu Toha ended the interview with Central Current describing the research he would have to do to complete the next family tree, a depiction of the  unplumbed depths of Israel’s destruction of Gaza.

“I’m doing that family tree, and I’m going to call a journalist in Gaza who covered that massacre to just check some information,” Abu Toha said. “So I’m still doing the family trees.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a statement from Le Moyne College and additional context from Le Moyne President Linda LeMura’s letter. The headline and story have been updated for clarity.

Read LeMura’s letter here:

Dear Members of the Le Moyne College Community:

As president of Le Moyne College, I welcome the free exchange of ideas that is an important characteristic of higher education. At the same time, we must continuously strengthen our efforts to ensure that every community member feels included in our academic, spiritual, cultural and social life.

I am writing regarding a guest lecture event on April 15, and concerns brought to my attention in the days since regarding the impact of the language used. During the event, the speaker used the word “genocide” in connection with the State of Israel. I recognize the profound historical weight this term carries for the Jewish people and the real hurt its use can cause. We take these concerns seriously.

Our Jesuit commitment to cura personalis – care for the whole person – demands that we protect the dignity and wellbeing of every individual. While our mission requires us to engage in difficult geopolitical questions and fiercely defend academic freedom, we must pursue these conversations through genuine dialogue and respect for the humanity of those with whom we disagree. It deeply troubles me that this recent event caused some members of our community to feel unwelcome.

Going forward, I am committed to the following:

  • Convening a facilitated dialogue between student organizations and College leadership to discuss how we engage with sensitive geopolitical topics in a way that is rigorous, honest and respectful of all communities on campus.
  • Working with our student affairs and mission offices to develop shared guidelines for hosting and moderating campus programming that involves deeply charged historical and political language.
  • Making it unequivocally clear that antisemitism, along with all forms of bigotry and hate, has no place at Le Moyne. Our Jewish community members – and indeed all students, faculty and staff – are valued and protected members of this community.

The search for truth is central to the Jesuit tradition and is enriched by our hearing diverse perspectives. This search must be conducted with reverence for the dignity of every person in the room. That is the standard to which I hold this institution and myself.

Thank you to all who have spoken up and called upon us to be better. I am grateful, and I am listening.

With respect and resolve,

Linda M. LeMura, Ph.D.

President

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...