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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, on Monday night, over 2,000 people packed into the historic Riverside Church in New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Democracy Now! Speakers and performers included Angela Davis; Patti Smith; Michael Stipe; V., formerly Eve Ensler; Hurray for the Riff Raff; and a surprise appearance by Bruce Springsteen. We will be airing excerpts over the coming days.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian writer and poet Mosab Abu Toha. He fled Gaza with his family in December 2023 after he was detained by Israeli forces for two days. He was close friends with the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023. This is Mosab Abu Toha speaking last night at Riverside Church.
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thank you so much, Democracy Now! Thank you, Amy, Nermeen and Juan.
I mean, these are very heartbreaking moments. There is no language that can describe my feelings listening to my dear friend Refaat. He is somewhere else better than this ugly world that we are trying, all of us, to survive.
It was October 12th, 2023, when I had my interview with Amy. I was still in our house in Gaza. This house has been a heap of rubble since October 30th, 2023. Just two days after the interview I did with Amy on October 12th, Israel killed 30 members of my extended family, including my great-uncle, Khader Abu Toha, his wife, his children, the wives of his children, the grandchildren. The youngest was 4 years old. That same Khader was the only one in my family who was interested in doing the family tree. And I ended up doing his family tree after he was killed. And that’s something that I kept doing, unfortunately, to document the genocide that Israel perpetrated not only against Palestinians, but the Palestinian families. Israel has erased hundreds of families in Gaza, including some of my relatives, some of whom remain under the rubble even now.
“Under the Rubble.”
She slept on her bed,
never woke up again.
Her bed has become her grave,
a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room,
the ceiling a cenotaph.
No name, no year of birth,
no year of death, no epitaph.
Only blood and a smashed
picture frame in ruin
next to her.
In Jabalia camp, a mother collects her daughter’s
flesh in a piggy bank,
hoping to buy her a plot
on a river in a faraway land.
A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.
It rained again last night.
The new plant looked for
an umbrella in the garage.
The bombing got intense
and our house looked for
a shelter in the neighborhood.
I leave the door to my room open, so the words in my books,
the titles, and names of authors and publishers,
could flee when they hear the bombs.
I became homeless once but
the rubble of my city
covered the streets.
They could not find a stretcher
to carry your body. They put
you on a wooden door they found
under the rubble:
Your neighbors: a moving wall.
The scars on our children’s faces
will look for you.
Our children’s amputated legs
will run after you.
He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
No bread.
Death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids.
No need for a table, no need for bread.
A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four-year-old daughter.
The colors are about four feet high.
Next year, they would be five.
But the painter has died
in an air strike.
There are no colors anymore.
There are no walls.
I changed the order of my books on the shelves.
Two days later, the war broke out.
Beware of changing the order of your books!
What are you thinking?
What thinking?
What you?
You?
Is there still you?
You there?
Where should people go? Should they
build a big ladder and go up?
But heaven has been blocked by the drones
and F-16s and the smoke of death.
My son asks me whether,
when we return to Gaza,
I could get him a puppy.
I say, “I promise, if we can find any.”
I ask my son if he wishes to become
a pilot when he grows up.
He says he won’t wish
to drop bombs on people and houses.
When we die, our souls leave our bodies,
take with them everything they loved
in our bedrooms: the perfume bottles,
the makeup, the necklaces, and the pens.
In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed.
Nothing remains for the soul.
Even our souls,
they remain stuck under the rubble for weeks.
Now for years.
For Gaza, for Refaat Alareer, for all our loved ones, those who were killed, those who are surviving in the streets, in tents, for my three sisters who are in Gaza right now, for my beloved ones who remain under the rubble while we are speaking for a free Palestine.
[singing]
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was the Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian writer and poet Mosab Abu Toha on Monday night at Democracy Now!’s 30th anniversary celebration.
AMY GOODMAN: To hear the whole celebration, you can go to democracynow.org.
