In an extended interview, Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha discusses the situation in Gaza and his new book of poetry titled Forest of Noise. He fled Gaza in December after being detained by the Israeli military, but many of his extended family members were unable to escape. He reads a selection of poems from Forest of Noise, while sharing the stories of friends and family still struggling to survive in Gaza, as well as those he has lost, including the late poet Refaat Alareer. He also describes his experiences in Gaza in the first months of the war, including being displaced from his home and abducted by the Israeli military, noting that the neighborhood in Jabaliya refugee camp that his family first evacuated to last year was bombed by the Israeli military just days ago. “Sometimes I want to stop writing because I’m repeating the same words, even though the situation is worse. The language is helpless,” Abu Toha says. “Why does the world make us feel helpless?”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As human rights activists plead with global leaders for immediate action, calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan’s foreign minister met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in London today and condemned the humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza, telling Blinken, quote, “We do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop,” he said.

For more, we’re joined by Palestinian poet and author from Gaza, who writes in his new book of poems, “If you live in Gaza, you die several times.” Mosab Abu Toha’s second book of poetry is just out. It’s titled Forest of Noise. His previous award-winning book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab Abu Toha is a columnist, a teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His recent essay in The New York Times is headlined “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.” And his latest piece for The New Yorker is headlined “The Gaza We Leave Behind.”

Mosab Abu Toha, it’s wonderful to have you in studio safely here in New York, but I know that your heart and mind are in Gaza right now. Before we talk about your poetry, you have just come with terrible news for you and your family about what is happening there. Can you describe what you’ve heard just today?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thank you so much, Amy.

Yeah, I mean, just you mentioned the airstrikes that took down 10 residential buildings. I was staying in that place with my wife and kids just before we had to leave for an UNRWA school to stay in a shelter there and before I was abducted by the Israeli army. And this morning, I looked at the names of some of the people who were killed in that airstrike, and I see the, I mean, 19 names from the same family, including Um Fathi Abu Rashed [phon.], I mean, a temporary neighbor. I mean, we had Um Fathi as a neighbor for a few days before we had to leave the neighborhood. And now I read that this neighborhood, where I was staying with them, was bombed. So, she was killed along with some of her children. And this is the case of so many people. I’m not sure if you can see this. This is the list of the whole family. And, for example —

AMY GOODMAN: You’re holding up a list of what? Some 20 names?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, 20 names, including Um Fathi, the grandmother, her children and her grandchildren. And I look at — for example, I read this every day. So, there is Mohammed Salman, his brother Yousef, Islam, Sama, Aya, so five brothers. And then there is Mahmoud Fathi, the son Um Fathi Abu Rashed, and his wife and their children. So, I’ve been seeing this all the time.

And by the way, we are focusing right now on north Gaza. Yesterday, late at night, Israel bombed intensely Khan Younis. And I’m looking at some of the pictures here. These are the photos of the children who were killed yesterday. They just were able to withdraw the bodies of these children after the Israelis retreated from the area. So, and that was today. I learned about this just half an hour ago.

And then I went to the local news channel in my city, Beit Lahia, north Gaza, and I saw a picture of my neighbor, Ayman Abu Laila. This is his photo. He was killed — he was killed this morning while he was trying to get some water from a tap in the street. Ayman, to honor his memory, he was the principal of the only agricultural college in north Gaza. And he was trying — by the way, he lived just a few blocks away. And he wanted to move to stay with his brother, because there are some friends and some neighbors who are staying there, so he wanted to be close to the people who are there. He was killed. And his son — my wife just told me, because she was on the phone with her mother and father, who are trapped right now in Beit Lahia. They were told that the brother of my neighbor has been critically wounded, and he is in the house. There is no way that an ambulance can come. There is no way that anyone can come to their rescue. And the same thing happened yesterday in the Jabaliya refugee camp, the 10 residential buildings that were took down.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, yesterday, last night, I saw you at the Brooklyn Public Library, sold out, to hear you speak about your poetry. And you said at the beginning — I saw your wife and your three little children, but that hadn’t been the plan. You’re now in Syracuse, at Syracuse University.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about you almost canceling the day before, because your wife was too terrified for you to come to New York.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Indeed. I mean, taking my wife and three kids with me was a last-minute decision. I mean, the Israeli army has been horribly attacking north Gaza, displacing people and kidnapping, abducting doctors and nurses and journalists. And even the injured people, they had to evacuate. I mean, just imagine, I mean, people who have been injured, and they had some medical care, and they had to be on some medical equipment. They are taken away from the hospital. Some of them would die. And that’s why The Lancet journal said that more than 200,000 people have been — have died or were killed by the Israeli airstrike, the Israeli military campaign since October 7th.

So, my wife’s family, including her father, her mother, her siblings and some of the nephews and nieces, her grandparents, too, aged 75, they are now trapped in the family house, and they are unable to leave. And now Atta Abu Laila, my neighbor, was killed just a few meters away from them by shrapnel, by a piece of shrapnel from a tank shell. So, she worries that if I am away from her and she gets some terrible news, like today’s news, she would die from pain and grief. So she wanted me to be with her. And I told her I couldn’t cancel, you know, the event at the Brooklyn Public Library and also my event today at NYU. So, I said, “OK, you come with me.” And now she came with me, as if this would — I mean, I don’t claim — I don’t say that I would make her feelings better, because I, too, have family in Beit Lahia. I have a young sister with three children. The youngest is 2 years old. And I haven’t talked to her for about 10 days. It’s impossible to get in touch with my sister. I don’t know how she’s surviving or whether she’s alive at this moment.

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote on social media six days ago, “I write with a heavy heart that my cousin Sama, 7 years old, has been killed in the air strike on their house along with 18 members of her family, which is my extended family.”

MOSAB ABU TOHA:........

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