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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn now to look at Gaza as Israel’s military has launched a new offensive on northern Gaza. Over the weekend, Israel ordered more than 300,000 Palestinians to flee. Israel’s latest mass evacuation order came on the one-year anniversary of the start of its brutal war on Gaza following Hamas’s attack on October 7th. Over the weekend, Israeli forces attacked a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah, killing at least 26 Palestinians. The official death count in Gaza is nearing 42,000 but believed to be much higher.
We’re joined now by Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet and author. He left Gaza in December after being detained by the Israeli military. His essay in The New York Times, published Sunday, is headlined “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.” And his latest piece for The New Yorker magazine is “The Pain of Travelling While Palestinian.” He’s a columnist, teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, author of the award-winning book titled Things You Mays Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. His second book of poetry will be out next week. It’s titled Forest of Noise.
Mosab, welcome back to Democracy Now! We talked to you right after you came out of Gaza. We also spoke to you in Gaza. You had been detained by the Israeli military. Your thoughts on this anniversary of both the Hamas attack and the beginning of the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli military in Gaza?
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thanks so much, Amy, for hosting me and for this platform.
My thoughts is that whereas the Israelis were able to bury their dead after October 7th, there are just thousands of Palestinians who — either whose bodies were not found because of the Israeli airstrikes, the intense Israeli airstrikes, and others whose bodies were left under — still under the rubble of their houses. I lost 30 members of my extended family, three first cousins, two of whom with their husbands and their children, and I haven’t been able to bid them farewell. Some of them, they have nothing in their bodies left for me to locate them. And many of them are still under the rubble, because there is no fuel, there is no equipment to remove the rubble from above the bodies. So, it is really devastating to think that after a year, the world is still thinking about the October 7th only, rather than about the years and decades before October 7 and the many and long, long days and weeks that followed October 7.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond to the pope calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon, in Gaza, the French President Macron calling for an end to weapons sales to Israel, the U.S. continuing those weapons sales — though President Biden has said he wants a ceasefire — and these latest attacks in Gaza?
MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, it’s really funny when someone says that we need to achieve a ceasefire as soon as possible — this is what President Biden and Kamala Harris are asking for — but at the same time they never stop sending bombs to Israel. And they never even took any measures to stop Israel from invading humanitarian areas and from targeting humanitarian aid trucks when they enter Gaza. So, instead of monitoring whatever bombs and weapons get into Israel — not only sending Israel weapons, but instead of monitoring whatever bombs Israel is using against the civilian population and even the tent areas, where there are only tents there, there is even no house, there are even no houses there — so, instead of monitoring the weapons that are getting into Israel and the kind of weapons that Israel is dropping, they’re keeping very close eyes on the kind of trucks and the kind of foods and biscuits and luncheon canned food into Gaza.
And this is something that I wish I could hear after Palestine was occupied in 1948. Weapons should have stopped being sent to Israel not in 2023 or 2024. It should have been stopped, you know, after 1948. And they should have called for a ceasefire, you know, and the halt of settlement construction in the West Bank and the expansion of settlements. They should have called for all of this, not only for a ceasefire, because a ceasefire does not lead to peace. There should be justice. And all those who care about Palestinian lives, why don’t you recognize them as a people, as people who should have their political rights, not only to look at them as victims of Israeli terrorism?
AMY GOODMAN: You were a teacher in Gaza. So many schools in Gaza have been hit. So many were turned into shelters and then still hit by the Israeli military. You write in your New York Times column, “On Saturday morning, I learned from my school’s WhatsApp group that my most talented student, Hatem al-Zaaneen, had been killed in Beit Hanoun, where Israel that day carried out strikes.” Can you talk, as we wrap up, about your students, about your colleagues, those who are dead and alive, your own family, and how it’s coped with, leaving Gaza today?
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Just honor my student, his name is Hatem al-Zaaneen. I would like to pronounce his name the way he —
AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry.
MOSAB ABU TOHA: — used to tell me his name when I first met him. Hatem’s hope was to join me in the States when he grows up. I promised him, literally, when he was — he was one of the only students, one of the few students who kept in touch with me when I was in Syracuse doing my M.F.A. two years ago. And he kept in touch. “When are you going to come back? I need you to teach me. I love all teachers, but I want you to teach me. I love your teaching.” And I told him, “You know, when you grow up, you should come to this country. It’s very beautiful. People here are really beautiful, and the universities are really magnificent.” And I told him, “I will help you apply for a scholarship to come to the States.” He was very, very brilliant. And he won a short story competition, and I still have the video on my phone of him reciting the short story that he picked for the contest. I mean, this is Hatem.
And he was not — I mean, first, I thought he was killed in a municipality building where he was sheltering with his family. But later, a teacher corrected this to me, early today, that Hatem was looking for firewood to help his family bake and cook food. And Israel is not only blocking the entrance of food trucks, but they are also killing people who are looking for ways to survive. So, children like Hatem and my siblings and their children, they are not living. They are only spending their time trying to survive.
And there’s no place that’s safe in Gaza. Very important, Amy. You mentioned that Israel ordered people in north Gaza, about — I mean, Gaza used to have about 1 million people, but now with the evacuations, now I think the number is about 400,000 people, including my father, three of my siblings and their children. Today, they ordered — and also my wife’s family, all of them are in north Gaza right now, and they are looking for ways to evacuate, but they don’t know where. So, they ordered Beit Lahia, Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun to evacuate. And an hour after that, they ordered three areas in Khan Younis in south Gaza to evacuate. So, the thing is not about evacuating. So, people are evacuating from north Gaza to south Gaza, and then they find themselves bombed in south Gaza. So they are cramming people there.
And I thought — I was asked a lot of times by friends, dear friends of mine, after October 7th, “Why are you not going south? The Israelis are telling you to go south. Why don’t you go south?” I told them, “Well, do you have any guarantee that I will make it alive south?” And then, the second question, “Do you guarantee that I will be safe in south Gaza? Is there any place that’s called safe?” And safety is not about not being killed by shrapnel or by airstrikes. Safety is about finding food, finding water, finding medicine. There is nothing in south Gaza even. So, wherever you go, there is nothing that’s called a humanitarian area.
AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, we are going to have you back on to talk about your new book of poetry. I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian —
MOSAB ABU TOHA:Appreciate it.
AMY GOODMAN: — poet and author. His new book, out next week, is called Forest of Noise. He’s speaking to us today from Durban, South Africa. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice.
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. Just to — if I have a moment, I am here to participate in a poetry festival that I was invited to. And I’m based right now in upstate New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you, Mosab.
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Appreciate it.
