October 21, 2026

VIA EMAIL

President Michael A. Fitts
Tulane University
6823 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118

Dear President Fitts:

I write on behalf of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., dedicated to the safety and security of the state of Israel and the Jewish people. I understand that parents of Tulane students have expressed deep concern about a campus program scheduled for tomorrow, titled “Israel’s Weaponization of Infectious Disease in Gaza,” featuring Dr. Salman Khan.

The ZOA shares these parents’ concerns, and we urge you to condemn the program and cancel it. Dr. Khan has written an article on the same subject, which was published in May in Mondoweiss, a website that is not only hostile to Israel but also opposed to Israel’s very existence. Dr. Khan’s article is filled with false accusations against Israel and it omits critical facts that responsible scholars would need to consider when evaluating the situation in Gaza.

In his article, Dr. Khan depicts Israel as a genocidal monster, “occupying” Gaza, denying medicine, food, and humanitarian aid to Gazans, and deliberately targeting hospitals and homes. According to Dr. Khan, Israel is “attempting to make life unlivable for Gazans by destroying their built environment.”

Dr. Khan’s article does not contain a single criticism of Hamas or of the many Gazans who joyfully participated in Hamas’ massacre of Jews on October 7, 2023, and who cooperated with Hamas to hide, starve and torture the mostly Jewish hostages that Hamas kidnapped on October 7, and brought to Gaza, hiding them in people’s homes, in underground tunnels, and even in hospitals.

There is no question that Dr. Khan will omit that critical context if he is permitted to address Tulane students tomorrow. And he will surely omit these additional facts, too:

• Israel has never “occupied” Gaza. There was not a single Israeli civilian or soldier in Gaza when Hamas terrorists and their allies – including ordinary Gazans – violated a ceasefire with Israel and breached Israel’s border on October 7, 2023. They invaded a peaceful dance festival, as well as homes and communities in southern Israel, murdering raping, and mutilating 1,200 mostly Jewish men, women and children, including babies, and kidnapping 250 more and taking them to Gaza where they were starved, tortured, and some killed. Israel responded to these attacks the way any country would and should – by defending its people and securing their safety.
• Israel is not committing genocide, which is the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national ethnic, racial, or religious group. Had Israel possessed that intention in Gaza, it would not have taken such extraordinary steps to limit civilian harm during the war, including by texting, making phone calls, and dropping leaflets to warn civilians in advance of attacks. Israel even paused military operations so that civilians could leave combat areas, and cancelled missions because children were nearby. John Spencer, a retired U.S. army officer and currently the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, noted all these crucial facts and rejected the genocide claim, explaining that “Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime.” Spencer describes that over 1.8 million tons of aid have entered the region. Israel has also supplied fuel for hospitals, repaired water pipelines, increased access to clean water, and helped more than 36,000 patients to leave Gaza for treatment abroad. In addition, the IDF has coordinated millions of vaccine doses to Gazans and facilitated the flow of food and medicine.
• With deliberate indifference to the safety of patients and others, Hamas uses hospitals as command centers, and to store weapons, hide hostages, and conceal terrorists, some of whom posed as medical personnel.
• If anyone is genocidal, it is Hamas, not Israel. Hamas is openly committed in its charter to destroying Israel and killing every Jew. After the October 7 attacks, a senior Hamas official praised the massacre and vowed that there would be more October 7 attacks until Israel is annihilated.

There are Gazan civilians who are surely suffering. But to ignore all these facts and place the blame for their suffering on Israel – as Dr. Khan irresponsibly does – is deplorable. If the university permits Dr. Khan to promote his lies to students at Tulane, he will not simply encourage undeserved hatred of the Jewish state. As we have seen happen at universities across the country since October 7, his anti-Israel program will fuel hatred of Jews, causing many Jewish students to feel unwelcome and even unsafe on the Tulane campus.

The ZOA thus respectfully urges you to (1) publicly condemn the program with Dr. Khan as hateful, antisemitic, and against the values of the university and let its sponsors know that they can host him elsewhere, without the imprimatur or support of Tulane University; (2) cancel tomorrow’s program, since it will encourage antisemitism, create fear and worry among Jewish students, and violate Tulane’s values to build a welcoming and respectful community, engage collaboratively, and pursue academic excellence; and (3) encourage the sponsorship of campus programs that promote the truth about Israel and the war in Gaza. Taking these steps will encourage responsible scholarship. And it will foster a nurturing campus community that feels safe and welcoming for all your students, including those who are Jewish and support Israel – a moral imperative, given this time of surging antisemitism in our country.

We look forward to your response. Please know that the ZOA is here to help in any way.