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Earlier this month, The New Yorker published a first-person account from the besieged Gaza Strip by Mosab Abu Toha, an aspiring young Palestinian poet who recently returned home after completing his studies in the United States.
“I am sitting in my makeshift house in Jabalia camp waiting for a ceasefire,” he wrote. “I feel like I’m in a cage. I get killed every day along with my people. The only two things I can do are panic and breathe. There is no hope here.”
Now, two weeks later, Abu Toha has reportedly been arrested by Israeli forces, colleagues report.
Diana Buttu, a lawyer and Palestinian activist who has been in contact with Abu Toha’s wife, told The Washington Post on Monday that he was trying to evacuate with his family to the southern Gaza Strip when he arrived with Abu Toha at an Israeli checkpoint The military arrested about 200 more people.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesman told The Post they were investigating the matter.
“It’s very scary,” said writer Laura Albast, another friend and colleague of Abu Toha. “We don’t know where he is.”
The New Yorker released a statement in its daily newsletter calling for the writer’s safe return and highlighting some of his recent contributions to the magazine. Earlier Monday, the magazine’s web editor, Michael Luo, wrote on social media that top editor David Remnick had sent a message to staff about the “worrying news,” saying they had “learned that he was in the news.” was arrested in the center of Gaza.” The New Yorker did not respond to requests for comment.
The magazine’s response struck some of Abu Toha’s colleagues, including Albast, as tepid. She said the magazine was happy to “expand its portfolio with the writings of a Gaza Strip” but did not name who arrested him.
Late Monday, the New Yorker released a brief statement saying, “Israeli forces reportedly arrest a New Yorker employee.”
“One idea in particular is bothering me, and I can’t put it aside,” Abu Toha wrote in the magazine last month. “Will I also become a statistic in the news?”
Abu Toha, who is in his early 30s, has published in a number of magazines, including Poetry, Arrowsmith and the Nation, which published his latest poem, “Gaza Family Letters, 2092,” on Thursday. He also wrote an essay for the New York Times last month. After a fellowship as a visiting poet at Harvard, he completed graduate studies earlier this year at Syracuse University, where he also served as a teaching assistant.
This year, he was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Poetry Prize for his 2022 collection Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza.
Abu Toha also founded the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza, the only English-language library in the enclave.
Buttu said Abu Toha had been in contact with the US government in recent weeks seeking permission to evacuate his family from Gaza. The youngest of his three children, three-year-old Mostafa, was born in the United States and is a U.S. citizen.
PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, wrote in a statement that it is “concerned by reports that poet Mosab Abu Toha, the founder of Gaza’s only English-language library, has been taken into custody by Israeli forces in Gaza.” We are seeking further details and demanding his protection.”
Washington-based writer Jehad Abusalim has known Abu Toha for years, and the two collaborated on the anthology “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire,” published last year. Abusalim said he learned of Abu Toha’s arrest through social media on Monday morning.
“His poems and writings document the perseverance of life despite many adversities – occupation and recurring aggression,” Abusalim said in a telephone interview. “Mosab represents life for us.”
“Of course, you don’t have to be a famous poet for your life to matter,” Abusalim continued. “But I think for us there is that element of familiarity because we knew Mosab and read his words.”
On Monday, New Yorker editor Daniel Gross published Abu Toha’s poem “Obit,” which the magazine published earlier this month.
“I think about this poem all the time.” he saidadded: “We are waiting for his return.”