Major current events are appropriately the subject of debate, especially at institutions such as Bowdoin devoted to training tomorrow’s leaders. Arguments that are well reasoned, supportable and respectful of differing views and the audience are what one should expect to hear on campus. Opinion pieces that are polemical, unfounded or threatening to members of the Bowdoin community, however, are unworthy of space in The Bowdoin Orient. Thus, it was dismaying to read the December 12, 2025 op-ed “Every genocide has its deniers: A reply” by Professor Nasser Abourahme.

“Every genocide” purports to respond to a December 5, 2025 op-ed by Neal Urwitz ’06. Mr. Urwitz furnished a cri de cœur reconciling his dislike of the current Israeli government with his commitment to Zionism. Among other things, he explained that Zionism means believing that, after millennia of persecution, Jews deserve a secure homeland in Israel while living peacefully alongside their Palestinian neighbors.

How does “Every genocide” reply to Mr. Urwitz’s message? With facts and nuanced reasoning addressing the points that were raised? With respect for the author, a Bowdoin alumnus it brands “one Neal Urwitz”? Or with respect for the readership? No, no and no.

“Every genocide” elides Mr. Urwitz’s points almost entirely while condemning him for presenting “a litany of distortions” that it fails to specify and proceeds to ignore. Instead, “Every genocide” delivers a diatribe (1) accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza; (2) equating Zionism with genocide (“genocide is at least one logical end of Zionism”); and (3) likening Zionists to murderers (Zionists have “contrived to convince themselves that Jewish safety in the world necessitates the ethnic cleansing, dispossession and now extermination of the people of Palestine”). I address these in order.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, murdered more than 1,200 people, raped women and took 254 hostages—acts Amnesty International calls war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel then retaliated fiercely. However, whether Israel’s response constitutes legitimate self defense or something unwarranted, perhaps genocide, is highly contentious and contested.

Genocide cannot be judged subjectively. It has a narrow definition under international law requiring the objective satisfaction of two elements: the intent to destroy, wholly or partially, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such; and the commission of certain specified acts to implement that intent. Like other crimes, it is subject to various defenses.

Because genocide is so heinous, it ought not be alleged casually. Genocide accusations demand legitimate evidence supporting both elements of the offense, even in Orient op-eds. “Every genocide” offers none, except the conclusory claim that 300,000 to 500,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7. As Mr. Urwitz wrote, “every civilian casualty is an unconscionable tragedy; that doesn’t make it genocide.”

Moreover, the magnitude of casualties “Every genocide” asserts is fantastical. Gaza’s official Health Ministry acknowledged recently that Gazan deaths in the war are less than 25 percent of the lower number (and below 15 percent of the higher number) that “Every genocide” claims. Furthermore, as “Every genocide” conveniently overlooks, many Gazan casualties were Hamas fighters—who are legitimate military targets: civilians Hamas illegally deployed as human shields or people Hamas, not Israel, killed. In short, “Every genocide” neither substantiates its genocide claims nor addresses their deficiencies.

The unsupported charge of Israeli genocide is provocative, but it pales beside the column’s more pernicious assertions: that Zionism itself is genocide and that Zionists, as such, are killers. “Every genocide” exhumes the false antisemitic blood libel that plagued Jews for centuries and clothes it in new garments. No longer are Jews supposedly slaughtering just individual Christians to use their blood in performing Jewish rituals or making Passover matzo. Nowadays, Jews who believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state are stereotyped as mass murderers. However freshly it’s draped, though, this is still the same old antisemitic trope—Jew hatred that unconscionably puts the Bowdoin community’s Jews at risk. Ominously, the dissemination and acceptance of this racist notion will be supercharged because the author’s title—Bowdoin College professor—intrinsically confers undeserved legitimacy to it.

Ironically, as deadly attacks against Jews increase in the United States and worldwide, the vile antisemitism “Every genocide” trumpets reinforces why Jews need a secure homeland in Israel now more than ever.

Alan M. Christenfeld is a member of the Class of 1973.