Perhaps Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha’s most threatening weapon against Israel in its relentless and devastating bombardment of Gaza is his pen.
But that very pen could also be what puts him in the most peril.
“I think the fact that I’m a poet and a writer, I should be killed maybe sooner than others,” said Abu Toha to a packed audience late last month near Boston.
This was one of several powerful moments during Abu Toha’s talk on Oct. 30 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about his experiences during what is largely believed to be an ongoing genocide in Gaza over the last year, before fleeing with his family to Cairo and later to the United States. Abu Toha’s newest book of poetry, “Forest of Noise,” was just released, following his earlier book, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” which won several awards including the Derek Walcott Prize and the Palestine Book Award.
Abu Toha is known in Palestine for his poetry and for building the only English-language library, the Edward Said Library, which has since been destroyed amid the relentless bombing of Gaza. He recently won the Flora Lewis Award by the Overseas Press Club of America for best commentary in any medium on international news for essays that he wrote for the New Yorker about how dire the situation is in Gaza.
But throughout Abu Toha has been beaten, abducted, separated from family and lost many relatives and friends to Israeli forces.
Despite all that he has witnessed, however, Abu Toha has not given up hope. He wants to rebuild the library someday, saying “rebuilding the library is not only about bringing books from the outside world into Gaza, but it’s also about creating a safe place for the children and adults to come to this library. Rebuilding the library is not only about the books and the shelves and the tables and the chairs or the computer lab — it’s also about creating a safe place for these people who would come and use the books and use this space. And I hope that I will find the children and adults in Gaza who would believe in the importance of the library, that I will rebuild.”
Middle East historian and MIT lecturer, Pouya Alimagham, moderated the event, starting by asking Abu Toha if he was specifically targeted because he is a writer and is perceived as a threat, or does he have a degree of protection because of his fame?
Abu Toha’s response was lengthy as he described his abduction following the destruction of his home. His home was bombed and destroyed two weeks after he and his family evacuated. He mused, “if we decided to be in the house the night of the bombardment, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.” Shortly after fleeing with his wife and three children to the northern part of Gaza where they tried to make their way to the Rafah border crossing in Southern Gaza, Abu Toha describes being abducted along with 200 other men by Israeli forces at a checkpoint. He described the chaos of not knowing whether his family was safe, while his family simultaneously did not know if he was safe. He described being blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten, and insulted before being placed on a military truck. He didn’t know where he was being taken. During that time, Israel was bombing places that were once thought to be off limits, such as schools with shelters so no place felt safe.
“I didn’t know while I was abducted that my wife and kids were still breathing. And they themselves did not know whether I was breathing,” he said.
Having published stories in the New Yorker and the New York Times and winning literary awards, he said, did give him a voice that he could with the world. This helped the word spread about his captivity. Abu Toha says he was targeted simply for being Palestinian.
“You are targeted in the first place because you are a Palestinian who stayed in his house.”
Abu Toha went on to describe the targeting of doctors, journalists, and other Gazans, and to say, “I understand this as a targeting of doctors and poets and artists and people who try to help their societies. So everyone is a target. Not because I’m a poet.”
But, he said, because he’s a poet and a writer, he probably should have been killed sooner than the others.
Alimagham also asked Abu Toha’s views on how Israel claims it’s bombing targets where Hamas is active: “Because I think most of us here now know that this was never about security. This is a war of annihilation.”
In response, Abu Toha pointed out that Israel says it’s carrying out “precise airstrikes on military targets,” but it’s actually bombing of entire neighborhoods, several houses or apartment buildings at a time. He spoke of his wife’s uncle, whose house was bombed just four days before the poetry, event leaving 32 people dead. A staggering 22 of the people were all from the same family.
During the course of the evening, Abu Toha mentioned scores of people that he was somehow connected to who have died in Gaza from bombs or snipers or because of a lack of access to medical care or food. It was hard to keep track of all the death, yet Abu Toha keeps a firm grasp on the names and stories of those who have perished. He does so with a grim determination not to let people be forgotten.
He described being in a refugee camp with his mother and family when a bombing happened. “The bombing wiped out a complete neighborhood. What does it mean, complete? It means that more than 50 or 70 houses were wiped out in the refugee camp.”
Many of these homes, he said, were not concrete buildings, but small rooms built 70 or 60 years ago, roofed by tin sheets.
“So just imagine you are dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on a room that doesn’t have a concrete ceiling. I went there and I have pictures. I’m not sharing any of these, but I saw, I took pictures of the neighborhood. The houses were in craters themselves. The houses were in the craters. It was a big hole. And when you ask Israel, ‘Oh, we were targeting a Hamas by bombing 50 houses.”’
“This is not a war, this is a genocide,” he said. “I mean, I understand the war as something that’s carried out, you know, between armies. There are targets, there are civilian areas. You can’t bomb this place because you said it’s a humanitarian area. I don’t understand how this continues to happen.”
Alimagham asked Abu Toha what he would say to the students who risked their academic futures facing expulsion and arrest by participating in the encampments last year on college campuses in solidarity with the Palestinian people. He pointed out that the students faced ridicule and hostility from the media, President Biden, even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Abu Toha responded by thanking the protesters and reminded the audience that many people in Gaza do not have access to the news right now because of their lack of electricity and internet. He said that he hopes one day when this genocide has ended, the people who are children now trapped in rubble will see the stories about a group of students at MIT who challenged authority.
“Even if they lose their place in the university, even if they lose their awards, even if a writer loses his job at university or at the magazine, you will win. And hopefully they will survive to see that you took it on yourself to stand for them. Because if you continue to stand, they will try and stand. And if you keep running with them, they will not stop to run and find their own future.”
“You should have enough humanity,” he said, “to imagine yourself in my place.”
