Award-winning Palestinian poet and writer Mosab Abu Toha doesn’t have time to engage in a “both sides” debate about slogans chanted by a rap group at a Glastonbury music festival.
Mosab is instead spending his time trying to remember, document, and share the names and stories of Palestinian family members and friends who have been killed during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. He showed me a page where he wrote the names of three generations of his family that were killed in a single Israeli airstrike. Born and raised in occupied Gaza, Mosab was able to escape to America in 2023 after enduring detention and torture at the hands of the IDF. Since then, he has won a Pulitzer Prize for his New Yorker articles reflecting a Palestinian perspective on Israel’s daily atrocities committed in both Gaza and the West Bank. He has also published a second book of poetry, Forest of Noise, that was released in 2024.
(An image of Mosab Abu Toha from City Lights Publishers)
However, Mosab’s main goal is to share the stories and voices of Palestinians who are both literally and figuratively erased by a complicit corporate media and an atrophied establishment that is beholden to war criminal Prime Minister Netanyahu, AIPAC money, and corporate donors. For the first time, Mosab’s message has the chance of reaching the majority of American ears who have been radicalized in real time, witnessing a genocide streamed live to their phones. A majority of Americans, especially the young, have sharply moved in favor of Palestinians and are increasingly critical of Israel and its regime. Israel has lost the narrative, the youth, and the culture war. Still, Palestinians continue dying, even as they hold eternal hope for freedom and justice.
In this important conversation, Mosab tells the story of growing up in occupation, remembering the names of the dead, and the importance of centering and elevating Palestinian voices and their call for freedom.
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