The November 7, 2025 op-ed piece authored by the “40+ members of the Bowdoin Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine” (FSJP) betrays a misguided, fragmented and woke interpretation of Middle Eastern history and recent events. It accuses Israel of a “decades-long cleansing of the Palestinian people,” which is a calumny. In fact, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, leaving Gaza to govern itself. Instead, Hamas, a U.S. and European Union-designated terrorist group, violently took control of Gaza and, for the next two decades, diverted billions of dollars of international aid to the purchase of weapons and the construction of tunnels instead of helping Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this culminated in the Hamas (and Gazan) invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 which resulted in more than 1,200 Israelis killed and 250 people taken hostage—the most dead Jews since the Holocaust.

The FSJP conflation of anti-Israel criticism with anti-Zionism puts us on the slippery slope to antisemitism. This also applies to Zohran Mamdani. His refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” and his singular obsession with anti-Zionism, of which the FSJP is so proud, help to justify the clear and troubling increase in antisemitism in America.

Given the worldview of many who educated Mr. Mamdani at Bowdoin (and those who have joined the faculty since his graduation), perhaps we should not be surprised that the anonymous 40-plus members of the FSJP are now contributing to an increase in antisemitism at Bowdoin.

Jeff D. Emerson ’70

Jeff Emerson ’70 is a trustee emeritus.