AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As human rights activists plead with global leaders for immediate action, calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan’s foreign minister met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in London today and condemned the humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza, telling Blinken, quote, “We do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop,” he said.

For more, we’re joined by Palestinian poet and author from Gaza, who writes in his new book of poems, “If you live in Gaza, you die several times.” Mosab Abu Toha’s second book of poetry is just out. It’s titled Forest of Noise. His previous award-winning book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab Abu Toha is a columnist, a teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His recent essay in The New York Times is headlined “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.” And his latest piece for The New Yorker is headlined “The Gaza We Leave Behind.”

Mosab Abu Toha, it’s wonderful to have you in studio safely here in New York, but I know that your heart and mind are in Gaza right now. Before we talk about your poetry, you have just come with terrible news for you and your family about what is happening there. Can you describe what you’ve heard just today?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thank you so much, Amy.

Yeah, I mean, just you mentioned the airstrikes that took down 10 residential buildings. I was staying in that place with my wife and kids just before we had to leave for an UNRWA school to stay in a shelter there and before I was abducted by the Israeli army. And this morning, I looked at the names of some of the people who were killed in that airstrike, and I see the, I mean, 19 names from the same family, including Um Fathi Abu Rashed [phon.], I mean, a temporary neighbor. I mean, we had Um Fathi as a neighbor for a few days before we had to leave the neighborhood. And now I read that this neighborhood, where I was staying with them, was bombed. So, she was killed along with some of her children. And this is the case of so many people. I’m not sure if you can see this. This is the list of the whole family. And, for example —

AMY GOODMAN: You’re holding up a list of what? Some 20 names?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, 20 names, including Um Fathi, the grandmother, her children and her grandchildren. And I look at — for example, I read this every day. So, there is Mohammed Salman, his brother Yousef, Islam, Sama, Aya, so five brothers. And then there is Mahmoud Fathi, the son Um Fathi Abu Rashed, and his wife and their children. So, I’ve been seeing this all the time.

And by the way, we are focusing right now on north Gaza. Yesterday, late at night, Israel bombed intensely Khan Younis. And I’m looking at some of the pictures here. These are the photos of the children who were killed yesterday. They just were able to withdraw the bodies of these children after the Israelis retreated from the area. So, and that was today. I learned about this just half an hour ago.

And then I went to the local news channel in my city, Beit Lahia, north Gaza, and I saw a picture of my neighbor, Ayman Abu Laila. This is his photo. He was killed — he was killed this morning while he was trying to get some water from a tap in the street. Ayman, to honor his memory, he was the principal of the only agricultural college in north Gaza. And he was trying — by the way, he lived just a few blocks away. And he wanted to move to stay with his brother, because there are some friends and some neighbors who are staying there, so he wanted to be close to the people who are there. He was killed. And his son — my wife just told me, because she was on the phone with her mother and father, who are trapped right now in Beit Lahia. They were told that the brother of my neighbor has been critically wounded, and he is in the house. There is no way that an ambulance can come. There is no way that anyone can come to their rescue. And the same thing happened yesterday in the Jabaliya refugee camp, the 10 residential buildings that were took down.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, yesterday, last night, I saw you at the Brooklyn Public Library, sold out, to hear you speak about your poetry. And you said at the beginning — I saw your wife and your three little children, but that hadn’t been the plan. You’re now in Syracuse, at Syracuse University.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about you almost canceling the day before, because your wife was too terrified for you to come to New York.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Indeed. I mean, taking my wife and three kids with me was a last-minute decision. I mean, the Israeli army has been horribly attacking north Gaza, displacing people and kidnapping, abducting doctors and nurses and journalists. And even the injured people, they had to evacuate. I mean, just imagine, I mean, people who have been injured, and they had some medical care, and they had to be on some medical equipment. They are taken away from the hospital. Some of them would die. And that’s why The Lancet journal said that more than 200,000 people have been — have died or were killed by the Israeli airstrike, the Israeli military campaign since October 7th.

So, my wife’s family, including her father, her mother, her siblings and some of the nephews and nieces, her grandparents, too, aged 75, they are now trapped in the family house, and they are unable to leave. And now Atta Abu Laila, my neighbor, was killed just a few meters away from them by shrapnel, by a piece of shrapnel from a tank shell. So, she worries that if I am away from her and she gets some terrible news, like today’s news, she would die from pain and grief. So she wanted me to be with her. And I told her I couldn’t cancel, you know, the event at the Brooklyn Public Library and also my event today at NYU. So, I said, “OK, you come with me.” And now she came with me, as if this would — I mean, I don’t claim — I don’t say that I would make her feelings better, because I, too, have family in Beit Lahia. I have a young sister with three children. The youngest is 2 years old. And I haven’t talked to her for about 10 days. It’s impossible to get in touch with my sister. I don’t know how she’s surviving or whether she’s alive at this moment.

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote on social media six days ago, “I write with a heavy heart that my cousin Sama, 7 years old, has been killed in the air strike on their house along with 18 members of her family, which is my extended family.”

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: For our TV audience, we are showing an image of Sama right now.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, please, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us who she is.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, Sama is one of the five children of my aunt Asma, who was also injured, the mother, I mean, in the house. Sama was staying with her parents, with her siblings, with her grandmother, who happens to be my grandmother’s sister. And I used to call her grandmother, because my grandmother passed away when I was very young. So, my grandmother’s sister, with two of her daughters and her grandchildren, and two of her daughter-in-laws and the grandchildren are still buried under the rubble until this moment.

So, Sama was killed in the airstrike. And the only reason why my aunt and her other children, or even though they were wounded — the only reason why they were not killed is that they were staying close to the door, because the bomb, when it falls, it usually hits the middle of the house. So, my aunt Asma survived the airstrike with some injuries, along with her husband and other four children. And they had — by the way, they were — my aunt had to walk to the Israeli soldiers who were standing just a few meters away from the bombed house. So, just imagine a criminal killing you and then waiting for you until you are either dead or come to them limping. And she told me that she kissed their hands, begging them to leave them alone and if she could take with her some wheat flour from the house that she was keeping next to her because there is no food in Gaza.

So, Sama was 7 years old. And I remember something very clearly, which is that every time I visited my aunt’s house, especially during the Eid, you know, after the Ramadan and after the pilgrimage season — so, we have two big Eids, or feasts. So, I used to visit my aunt, and her children are there. And this photo is from — I think you showed it. But this is from the Eid. This is her dress. And my aunt would bring a sheet of paper and ask her daughters, including Sama, ”Yalla” — because I’m an English language teacher, so she said, ”Yalla, show Mosab. Show Mosab the new words that you have learned — the colors, the animals.” But now Sama — I mean, I did not have a chance to bid her farewell. This is my cousin. And I lost 31 members of my extended family, including three first cousins, two of them with their husband and children. I didn’t get the chance even to see them before they were buried. And I don’t know whether some of them had any part of their bodies intact after the airstrikes.

So, just imagine the magnitude of loss that I’m facing as a — I’m just one person. Some other people lost all their families. And we know about the new term “wounded child, no surviving family.” About more than 2,000 children had the same case. They were the only — the sole survivors of their family. I mean, what future is awaiting them? No one is asking this question.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha is an award-winning poet and author. He has a new book of poetry out. It’s called Forest of Noise. Your descriptions now make me think of your little son. You came with your three children yesterday. Can you read the poem about your son and your daughter?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, sure. So, by the way, this poem was written after May 2021 attacks. So, my son Yazzan was about 5 years old. My daughter Yaffa was 4 years old. And this is about them.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is very important, because you just said this was written in May 2021.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Half your poems in Forest of Noise are before last October 7th —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Exactly, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — and the other half after.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I mean, this tells you — this tells you a lot of things. So, this poem could be written today. And if it was written today, there are so many things that would not be present here, because this current genocide is so different from any other wars that Israel launched against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

“My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter,” Gaza, May 2021.

At night, at home, we sit on the floor,
close to each other
far from the windows and the red
lights of bombs. Our backs bang on the walls
whenever the house shakes.
We stare at each other’s faces,
scared, yet happy,
that so far our lives have been spared.

My four-year-old daughter, Yaffa,
wearing a pink dress given to her by a friend,
hears a bomb
explode. She gasps,
covers her mouth with her dress’s
ruffles.
Yazzan, her five-and-a-half-year old brother,
grabs a blanket warmed by his sleepy body.
He lays the blanket on his sister.
You can hide now, he assures her.

And I have a video of that. It’s on my phone. I took a video of my son throwing a blanket. That’s how I couldn’t forget this moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, your kids know the hospitals in Gaza that we were just describing.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us, to humanize Kamal Adwan hospital, Al-Awda Hospital.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, by the way, Al-Awda Hospital — so, Kamal Adwan is run by the Gaza Health Ministry. The Al-Awda Hospital is run by the Palestinian Red Crescent, which is an NGO. And the Al-Awda Hospital is dedicated mainly to the people who cannot afford to pay health insurance. And many of the pregnant mothers who go to UNRWA clinics are referred to Al-Awda Hospital to give birth there for free. So it’s a hospital not only for the patients, but also the pregnant women to give birth. My sister Aya, 30 — sorry, 35 years old, is pregnant, and she’s about to give birth. And there is no hospital close to her. So I don’t know what she’s going to do.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is the main hospital in Beit Lahia and also in Beit Lahia project. And in the past few years, it was turned into a children’s hospital. And I used to take Yaffa and Yazzan to that hospital when they feel sick, when they have fever, when they are injured. And I have many friends who used to work as nurses there. And I know Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who is the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital right now, who we watched just a few minutes ago. I mean, he is very helpless.

I mean, I use this in my language. I say the situation in north Gaza — in Beit Lahia or north is catastrophic. I mean, how many times did I use the same word? I mean, sometimes I want to stop writing because I’m repeating the same word even though the situation is worse. So, I mean, language is helpless. I mean, I used the same vocabulary after October 7th to describe the situation in north Gaza, in Beit Lahia. I said we had no water, no food. That was October 12th. And now we are October 25th, 2024, so a year. I mean, does really language help us? Why does the world make us feel, I mean, helpless? I think — I mean, I don’t like this, as a human being. We have never stopped shouting and screaming and showing our pictures and videos.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you remind our viewers and listeners, who may not have seen you on Democracy Now!? First, soon after October 7th, we talked to you in Gaza. We then talked to you, or spoke to others about you, when you were taken by the Israeli military. Then, when you were released and made it with your family to Cairo, we spoke to you.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: We spoke to you in South Africa, and now you have come to the United States. But take us on that journey, how you got out. And remind us what happened when you were separated from your family and taken by the Israeli military.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, Amy, that interview that you did with me, it was October 12th. I can’t forget the date, because that was the last day I was in my house. I just finished my interview with you on October 12th. I think it was 3 p.m., which is eight hour, 8:00 morning here. I even didn’t pay attention to the time.

AMY GOODMAN: Right about now, New York time.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. I mean, by the time I finished my interview with you, I went down. My father and mother, my brother Hamza and his children and his pregnant wife, my brother Mohammed and his wife, my sister Aya with her children, who is now pregnant, my sister Saja and my sister Sondos. So, about 25 people were in the house with me. So, I went down, and I found my father and my mother packing their bags. And when I talk about bags, I talk about children’s school bags. We don’t have suitcases, by the way, which is something that many people don’t understand why. Because we don’t have airports, we don’t need suitcases. We travel with our backpacks, my children’s kindergarten backpack. I stuff it with some clothes and some — I put some water bottle there. So, I found my parents packing their bags, and I asked them, “Where are you going?” And they said, “You know the Israelis just dropped some leaflets ordering the residents of Beit Lahia, about 90,000 people, to evacuate.” And that was the first time I found my parents, you know, leaving. And then I went upstairs. I didn’t know what to take with me. I only took with me the copy, one copy, the only copy that I had of my first poetry book. And I took a bottle of water and some clothes for my children.

And then we went to the refugee camp. And do you know where we stayed? We stayed in the same neighborhood that was bombed yesterday, where 150 people were killed. And I just told you about the names of the people who were killed, including Um Fathi, who I now remember that we got one hour of water from the tap when we were in the camp. And Um Fathi would tell the neighbors, “The water is on. The water is on. Fill your buckets.” So, I remember here. And then, when the bombing got intense in the refugee camp, we thought of going to an UNRWA school which is just a few hundred meters away from the neighborhood in the camp. So, we stayed in a school shelter in Jabaliya, which was later raided by the Israeli army. And by the way, a few days ago, the Israelis again visited that school, took the men out. And they have abducted so many, including my wife’s sister’s husband. He’s a brother-in-law to me. So, they took him. And one reason he stayed in the school, he’s a nurse. He couldn’t leave the refugees in the school without any nursing person. So, he was abducted, and he is left with three children. The youngest was born after October 7. So, when the bombing got intense, I had to leave the school with my wife and kids, especially because we had the chance to leave Gaza for Egypt.

And on the Salah al-Din Street, which was described by the Israelis as a safe passage, I was abducted by the Israeli soldiers. I was handcuffed and blindfolded. And before that, I had to remove all my clothes. I was naked for the first time in my life. And under gunpoint, two Israeli soldiers were pointing their guns at me and the person next to me. And then we were taken to a place we didn’t know. I mean, for me, as a Palestinian who was born in Gaza, I had never been to Palestine, which is now Israel. So, that was the first time for me to sleep in my country, as a detainee, as someone who was blindfolded and handcuffed, as someone who didn’t know whether his wife and children, who he left behind, were still breathing.

Just imagine. Not only was I taken, blindfolded and handcuffed and beaten and harassed and insulted — they kept saying bad words in Arabic. These are the only words they know in Arabic, insulting words. But also, I did not know whether my wife and kids, from whom I was separated, were still breathing, whether they went to a place that is safe. Because there is no place that is safe. Why? Because when there is occupation, there is nothing that’s called a safe place. And I had also to worry about my mother and father, who I left behind in the refugee camp, and my siblings and their children. I mean, I was torn. I was torn into a hundred pieces, thinking about myself, why are they taking me, where are they taking me. And I heard some young men screaming, you know. Some of them had to be separated from their pregnant wives. So, after three days, I was released. I was dropped at the same checkpoint.

AMY GOODMAN: There was international outcry — 

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: — over you having been taken.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: As Mosab Abu Toha, not as a Palestinian. So, I think many people cared about me because I am a friend and a writer, but they did not maybe consider maybe doing the same thing with other people. It’s easier to get someone out than getting a whole population from under the military fist of the Israeli army. I mean, I just imagine if I was not a writer, if I was not a poet, if I did not have a publisher, if I did not have, you know, some journalism magazine that I wrote for. Just imagine no one knew about me. I would still have been under the Israeli custody. Maybe I could have died, just like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who was taken from Al-Awda Hospital, by the way, in November last year. And he was announced dead last October. He was the best surgeon in the Gaza Strip, and he was — he died. He was killed.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about another man, another poet, but he didn’t make it, the Palestinian poet, the Islamic University professor, someone you knew, Refaat Alareer, last on Democracy Now! October 10th, 2023. Refaat was killed by an Israeli strike in December, along with his brother, sister and four of his nieces. This is Scottish actor Brian Cox reciting Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die.” And then I want you to share your poem, a sort of segue to Refaat’s, “If I Must Die,” a video that went viral.

BRIAN COX: If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.

AMY GOODMAN: Scottish actor Brian Cox, you know, who played in Succession, reciting Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die” in a video that went viral. And you can go to democracynow.org to see our interview with Refaat just before he was killed. In your book, Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise, talk about Refaat and then your kind of rejoinder to this poem.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, I knew Refaat as a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. He did not teach me, but I would say that he taught me a lot, because when I was in my second year, he was in Malaysia doing — completing, finishing his Ph.D. And when he returned, I was already finishing my courses. But he was someone who led me to the We Are Not Numbers project that he co-founded, which is a project that offers some mentorship for young writers. I was in the beginning of my writing career. So, he introduced me to the group. And that is a picture that I took with the strawberries.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re showing an image of Refaat holding strawberries.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, yeah. We picked that strawberry, that same strawberry together in Beit Lahia, in my father-in-law’s farm, from my father-in-law’s farm. So, yeah, I knew Refaat as a father. He was a wonderful father for his kids. And he was a lovely son of his parents. His parents still survive, I hope, in Gaza City. And he’s also a professor of English literature. And when we were talking about literature, he would talk about Arabic literature and also English literature. His favorite poet, I think, was John Donne. And in the Arabic language, he loved the classical Arabic poems, like Al-A’sha, like Imru’ al-Qais, like Ibn Hilliza. And he would recite some Arabic poems to me, and I was amazed, you know?

So, before Refaat was killed, he published his poem “If I Must Die,” and he posted it on his Instagram. And I read that poem when I was still in north Gaza. It was before I was abducted. And it was very heartbreaking for me, I mean, someone writing about his death and what he wishes his death to be like. And I couldn’t but try and write my own “If I Must Die,” but I did not call it “If I Must Die.” I wrote “If I Am Going to Die.” But after he was killed, I retitled the poem, which is now called “A Request.” “A Request: After Refaat Alareer.”

If I am going to die,
let it be a clean death,
no rubble over my corpse
no broken dishes or glasses
and not many cuts in my head or chest.
Leave my ironed untouched jackets
and pants in the closet,
so I may wear some of them again
at my funeral.

Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, reading from his new second second book of poetry, Forest of Noise. Just months after Refaat was killed, his eldest daughter, Shaima Refaat Alareer, was also killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, along with her husband and 2-month-old son, Refaat’s grandchild.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just imagine. I mean, Refaat became a grandfather after he was killed. He became a grandfather after he was killed. And, I mean, something that breaks my heart, just as it must break everyone’s heart, is that when someone is killed, they even don’t know who was killed with them. They don’t know — I mean, Refaat did not know that his daughter Shaima and her husband, Abd al-Rahman Siyam, I think his name, and his grandchild were killed after him. I mean, I don’t know whether he knows about this, whether, I mean, he’s now feeling a lot of pain knowing about this.

So, it is a campaign of killing the father, the mother, the sister. I would call this not only a genocide. It is not only a genocide against a people, but it’s also a genocide against families, because when you look at the names of the people who are killed, you see the name of the father, the mother, the children, the grandchildren. It’s not about killing five people from the street or five people in the mosque or the school. It’s killing a whole family. When I tell you that I lost 31 members of my extended family, I talk about two first cousins with their husbands and their children. I’m not talking about my cousin, no. Her husband, their children, the youngest 2 or 4.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, can you look into this camera and share your message with the world, what you want the world to take away right now about what’s happening in your home, in Gaza?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, if the world cannot really help us, I hope that they will not continue to support the oppressor. If you can’t really stop this, why don’t you just go away? I mean, I wish the world was ignoring us. No, they are not ignoring us. No, they are contributing to our suffering and the genocidal campaign that Israel has been launching, not since last year, since 76 years.

I mean, maybe you just mentioned that Blinken says that in a few days, you know, the negotiations would start again. I mean, why don’t you say the same things about sending the weapons to Israel? Why don’t you say, “Oh, in a few days, we will try and send the Israelis some new weapons”? Why don’t you take your time and think about what these weapons are going to do? Why does it take time to resume negotiations and force the Israelis to stop their killing of my people? Why does it take time? Why is it difficult to stop this, but it’s easy to send more and more weapons? Just leave us alone.

AMY GOODMAN: Your choice of the last poem to share with our audience around the world. Would you like to share “The Moon” or “Right or Left” or “Under the Rubble”?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: “Under the Rubble” is long, so I will go with “Right or Left,” which is a poem that I wrote for one of my friend’s sisters. My friend himself was killed with his parents, with four of his sisters, with his two children. So the only survivors were his wife and two other sisters. So, the body of my friend, Ismail Abu Ghabin, the body of his sister, 16 years old, and his father are still under the rubble. So I wrote this poem about the bodies that remain under the rubble, the body of his sister. “Right or Left.”

Under the rubble,
her body has remained
for days
and days.
When the war ends,
we try to remove
the rubble,
stone
after stone.
We only find one small bone
from her body.
It is a bone
from her arm.
Right or left,
it does not matter
as long as we cannot
find the henna
from the neighbors’ wedding
on her skin,
or the ink
from a school pen
on her little index finger.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet and author. His new second book of poetry, Forest of Noise, has just been published. His previous award-winning book is called Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab Abu Toha is a columnist, teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which we’ll talk about in Part 2 of our conversation and post online. And also, I hope Mosab will read “Under the Rubble,” and we’ll post it at democracynow.org. Mosab, thank you for joining us in our New York studio.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thank you. I really appreciate it, Amy. Thank you

AMY GOODMAN: Next up, the BRICS summit has just wrapped up. We’ll be joined by two economists. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “I Hate the Capitalist System” by the late great Barbara Dane. She passed away this week at the age of 97. By the way, Mosab Abu Toha will be speaking and reading his poetry at New York University, NYU, today at 5:00 at the Lillian Vernon House.