On Gaza and Humanity with Mosab Abu Toha

Hey, everybody. It's me, Jon Stewart.
We're doing the weekly show podcast. It is Wednesday, August 6th.
Tomorrow is Thursday, I guess, August 7th. The summer is supposed to be quiet.
I think that's the way things are supposed to go, but it hasn't really worked out that way. I'm not going to talk actually too much moving into this because we have a conversation today that I think is an important one.
I think it's a sobering one, certainly. And so I just kind of want to get into it.
I've had conversations over these past many months with Jewish people and Arab people and Palestinian people. But I really wanted to give some time to someone from Gaza, someone whose family is there, who was born there, grew up there, and hear that perspective, one that I don't necessarily see a lot of.
So I'm just going to get in. He's an incredible writer, an incredible poet, winner of a Pulitzer for his writing.
And I'm just going to introduce him. His name is Mossab Abu Toha.
He's a poet. He's an author, and I want to get him in right now.
All right, folks, so we're going to talk. Obviously, this is an incredibly fraught situation and a difficult one, but I became aware of a gentleman whose writings I quite admired as an author and a poet.
His name is Mosab Abu Toha.

He joins us now.

Mosab, thank you so much for joining us and taking some time today.

Thank you so much, John.

Looking forward to the conversation.

Mosab, I wanted to ask you just for people that are listening at home, just to brief,

you were born in Gaza.

Is that correct?

Yes, I was born in Gaza in a refugee camp called Shata Refugee Camp. The same refugee camp where my father was born in 1962.
And the same refugee camp where my grandparents lived until they died after they were expelled from their homes in 1948 from Yaffa. So that's where I was born.
This was a refugee camp that became more of a city. Exactly.
And this is something that is, you know, outrageous when you see people, you know, commenting on some of the photos we post of the refugee camps, whether it's the Jabali refugee camp in North Gaza, where my mother was born. They say, oh, this is, this is a refugee camp.
There are no tents, but I mean, I mean come on it's 77 years of occupation and these people have been living in I mean you expect people to live in tents for 77 years this is really I mean this is sadistic you know the way that they you know make fun of you know our lives or the terms that we are using still using for the places where we were living.

Supposedly, you know, it was, you know,

refugee camp is a temporary place,

but it's been 77 years and there are eight refugee camps in Gaza, John.

There is the Shatih refugee camp.

Yeah, there is the Shatih refugee camp where I was born.

Also, my father was born there.

There is the Jebali refugee camp in North Gaza.

There is one in Rafah that Israel erased. And there is one in Nusairat.
You hear the name of the city, Nusairat, Borej, Maghazi, Khan Yunis. There are refugee camps in these areas.
And Israel decimated, as far as I know, two of them. The Jabali refugee camp where my mother was born and also my two maternal grandparents were born.
They were not born during the Nakba, my maternal grandparents. So they were born in the Jebele refugee camp.
And I was sheltering in the Jebele refugee camp before I had to leave Gaza in December 2023. And I look at videos, John, nothing is left of the refugee camp.
And the same thing with Rafah. They decimated the whole city, including the refugee camp there.
And if you want to talk more about this, it is heartbreaking for me as a Palestinian to realize that not only did the world watch Israel turn 70% currently of the Gazan population into refugees and their descendants, but also has carried out a military campaign, a genocidal one, in which they erased two refugee camps. So they are even making the refugee experience for the Palestinians a hellish experience.
Not only are they made refugees, not only are they killed, there are some Nakba survivors, by the way, John. Right.
And when you refer to the Nakba, I just want people to understand what he's referring to is in 1948, when the Israeli state was formed, Palestinians moved off of the land that they had been living in. They referred to it as the Nakba.
Yes, the disaster or the catastrophe. Yeah, they did not move out of there.
They were expelled from there. Or were expelled.
That's I apologize. Because, you know, the Israelis were using euphemism there.
They would say, oh, we are going to transfer these people. Or they, you know, the Arab countries that invaded Israel at the time, they asked them to leave.
But I mean, come on, even if these people moved out of their cities, like my grandparents in 1948, I mean, if I left a place, you know,

my city or my house, you know, because there is an armed conflict, there is a lot going on. Of course, I'm under the impression that I would be able to go back.
But that did not happen for 77 years. My grandparents, John, died in the refugee camp and they were buried in a cemetery close to the refugee camp.
And that cemetery was destroyed by Israel. And Mosav, and I apologize, you know, so I've been raised on a different narrative, right? Yeah.
And so when we approach these things from those two different perspectives, that's why, you know, what I wanted to talk to you about was that idea of what are the stories and the narratives that you wanted to express for that? I spent some time in Jordan and there were in Jordan an enormous amount of Palestinian refugee camps that had, as you said, turned into cities, but they are still not really Jordanians. They're Palestinian refugees.
There's also, you know, Palestinian camps in Lebanon. There were some, I guess.
In Syria. In Syria.
How many different enclaves? This all stemmed from those in 48 being driven from that area through the formation of that state? Would that be accurate? Yeah. So, John, you know, I mean, I'm listening to you and you are 100% accurate on that.
And tears are not on my eyes. They are inside of my body as I'm listening to you.
It is indeed the case of some of my mother's uncles who are living currently in Jordan in refugee camps, and they are not citizens of Jordan. And sometimes you think of this as a bad thing, and sometimes, you know, no, it's a good thing because these are refugees and they have the right to return.
So, indeed, there are refugee camps in five areas after 1948. There are eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.
There are more refugee camps in the West Bank, and there are refugee camps in Syria, and Jordan, and Lebanon. And even, I think, the refugee camps in Lebanon are the worst of all.
Really? If you look at videos, yeah, if you look at videos, people are living in something like slums, you know? People, I mean, they don't have electricity, They don't have enough water. They are struggling, maybe similar to what people are struggling in Gaza.
They don't have, they don't have the same rights as other Lebanese people. They are not citizens in those.
They're not citizens of Lebanon. They're not citizens of Jordan.
In Jordan, by the way. Yeah, Jordan, I visited Jordan.
John, I'm going to tell you a lot of things. Okay.
In Jordan, I visited Jordan for the first time in my life in 2019. And you know why? Because in 2019, I became a scholar at risk at Harvard University.
And I tried to apply for a permit to go to the American embassy in Jerusalem, which is about 40 miles away from where I lived in Gaza. And I had to apply for a permit and the Israelis denied me a permit to go to Jerusalem.

So I had to move the visa interview to Jordan, which is about four hours by car from Gaza if I was allowed to go through Israel. And I was denied that permit.
So I had to go to Egypt and then from Egypt to fly to Jordan. And then that was in 2019.
It was the first time for me since 2000 to see my aunt, Alia Abutoha, who was married to my father's cousin and lived in Jordan.

So it was the first time for me to see my aunt in 19 years at the time.

And then I went to the refugee camp where one of two of my mother's uncles lived after 1967.

And I met my mother's cousins and they told me

they don't have a Jordanian national number.

This means that they cannot apply for jobs there.

They could work here and there.

But sometimes one of my mother's cousins

told me that he proposed to a girl,

a Jordanian girl.

And when their families knew

that he doesn't have a Jordanian national number,

it didn't work, right?

Mosap, that's something that I think is, people might not realize. You know, many people who live in these refugee camps have relatives that are very, very close by to them, but they are unable to get to them.
There is, families have been split throughout this. Give us a sense, because you said something I thought very interesting, which was I went to go to Jordan.
I'm a scholar at risk from Harvard University and you wanted to go there. It's, how far did you say it was? 40 miles? From Gaza, where I lived in Bethlehia, because I was born in the refugee camp then.
I mean, Gaza is very small. Even if I move to another part, it's maybe 10 miles, five miles away from where I was born.
So I was born in the refugee camp. Then at the age of eight in 2000, we moved to live in Bethlehia, where some of my family were killed.
Some of my relatives were killed. But anyway, this is not the story right now.
So I applied for a permit to attend my appointment at the American embassy in Jerusalem because there is no American embassy or any other embassies in Gaza. So the closest embassy was in Jerusalem.
So I applied for a permit. So I was denied that permit.
From where I lived in Bethlehem to Jerusalem, 70 kilometers, which is 40 miles. Which is about an hour by car.
When you travel, except if it's in New York City. Right.
About three hours by car in New York City. Yes.
Exactly. So I permit.
And by the way, John. Denied.
Now, did they mention, Mossab, when you get a denial? Oh, security reasons. Security reasons.
They don't tell you, oh, what is your, what is the accusation? They don't want poets. They don't want a poet to go through.
It's not only me. It's most of people in Gaza.
They say security reasons. But they don't tell you what your security background is, what is the problem with you.
They don't tell you at all. Okay.
So, John, what happened, by the way, is that I would be taken on a bus from the Ares crossing, which is between Gaza and Israel. Okay.
I would be taken on a bus along with a Palestinian security man. He would be keeping our passports as travelers from Gaza to Jerusalem.
He would be keeping our passports with him. And then the bus would drop us off at the gate of the embassy.
We would go inside the embassy, attend the interview, and then we go to the same bus and go back to Gaza the same day. This is if you had been approved.
If you had been approved, that's how the trip would have gone. Okay, so now you haven't been approved.
What do you do? So, yeah, I had to apply for another appointment at the American embassy in Jordan, and I applied again. Okay.
I said, okay, maybe Israel doesn't want me to go to Jerusalem. Maybe I would do something wrong there.
I'll go to a different American embassy. Yeah.
So I applied for a new permit, and that same trip would take me from Gaza, from the the Airs Crossing to Jordan, to the Alembe Bridge on the other side of the country.

Right.

And again, the permit was denied. They did not approve my permit.

What was the reason? Is that another security reason?

So I have to apply for a permit to go to leave Gaza for Egypt and from there fly from Cairo to Amman in Jordan. So it's, by the way, I was 27 years old and that was the first time in my life I left Gaza.
The first time at 27, your entire life is spent in an area. Give people a sense of the size.
Yes, Gaza is 141 square miles. It's very small.
And there's 2 million people living there. Yeah.
Okay. I used to teach in Beit Hanun, which is another city that Israel decimated.
You look at videos. And by the way, John, we'll talk about this later.
It's not only the Palestinians who have been documenting this genocide. It's even the Israelis who are, you know, documenting the destruction from the drones.
They are showing you, okay, look at Beit Hanoun, it's decimated. Look at Khuzaha, east of Khan Yunus.
It's not only that we are saying Israel destroyed everything and then they would say, you know, the Israelis would say, oh, it's Hasbara, it's propaganda. But no, they themselves are documenting all these things.
So I used to teach in Beit Hanoun. I know that city very well.
So if you want to travel from North Gaza, Beit Hanoun, to South Gaza, which is Rafah, it wouldn't take you more than 40 minutes by car. This is from North to South.
And that's the top, the Northern part of Gaza to the Southern part of Gaza, 40 minute drive. 40, yeah, yeah.
I traveled from Beit Hanoun to Rafah to the border crossing when I traveled. And Rafah is the border crossing that's around the Egypt area, just to give people a sense of the geography.
Yeah. And then if you want to, in some areas, if you want to travel, you can look at the map of the Gaza Strip.
If you want to travel from east Gaza, for example, Shujiaia neighborhood, which is also decimated, and I wanted to go to the beach west of Gaza, sometime maybe it would take you 15 minutes. It's that narrow.
It's a very thin strip. Very thin.
It's very narrow. Exactly.
So this is the Gaza we lived in. And you know, despite the sea- And you lived there for your whole life up until 27.
I lived there my whole life. And by the way, in one of my poems, My Dreams as a Child, I still now, until now, I'm 32 years old, I still have dreams of seeing the refugee camp from a window on a plane.
I've never seen Gaza or Palestine from a window on a plane. I've never seen my country from above.
And by the way, there is no airport in Gaza, John. There is no airport in Gaza.
There is no airport in the West Bank. Israel destroyed the only airport that Gaza had, which was built in 1999.
It destroyed it in 2000, 2001. So that was the only time Palestinians had an airport, which was in Gaza.
Israel destroyed it. So when you were born there, Israel still had settlements within Gaza.

This is before, I guess, 2006 when they… 2005, they left Gaza. 2005, they left Gaza.
It is very ridiculous, John, and you mentioned that. It is very ridiculous to say we gave up Gaza.
We gave the Palestinians a chance to… Come on, what a chance did you give the Palestinians to build a state? you did not allow the Palestinians, you know, a chance to, come on, what a chance did you give the Palestinians, you know, to build a state? You did not allow the Palestinians to build an airport. They did not allow us to build a seaport.
And they kept the border crossings closed. So what kind of state are we supposed to build when Gaza has been under siege, even before Hamas took control of Gaza? So this is one of the biggest lies that Israelis and some of their allies keep repeating, oh, we gave them a chance, we left Gaza in 2005, but they built tunnels instead.
But come on, even before Hamas existed, even before Hamas took power in 2006, 2007, Israel did not allow us again to build airports, seaports. They did not allow us to, even by the way, this is shocking maybe to you as someone who's living in America.
We have 5G, right? Mobile connection. Cell phone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cell phone.
Do you know what kind of connection we have in Gaza? 2G. I didn't even know 2G.
What is that? That's a wire with two paper cups? Yes. You can't browse the internet.
You can't't rely on it 2g israel has been not approving the palestinians to get uh better than 2g mosab can you remember a time when there was an optimism within your life or your community where you thought oh maybe, maybe now the boot is being lifted. Maybe,

maybe there will be an opportunity or has it always within your family, when you talk about the future, I mean, you're a, you're a poet, you, you write these beautiful poems. I'm curious where that desire to dream came from.
Does it come from the feeling of a certain hopelessness? Or were you in any of these moments thinking that the tide had turned for your people and your family? Thank you so much. This is really a very great question.
In fact, this is devastating for me to think about because as a poet, I wrote about my experience of being wounded in an air strike in 2009. I was 16 years old.
Yes. And two pieces of shrapnel stayed in my body, and I didn't know that at the time.
I was wounded in January 2009, and the two pieces of shrapnel stayed in my head and neck until August. I had to go through.
How were you wounded, Mossab, if you don't mind me asking? So I was, it was 2000, December 2008, January 2009. Israel attacked Gaza for, I think, 22 days.
That was one of the biggest attacks on Gaza by Israel. And I was, at the time, I was going back from school.
I wrote about that in one of my poems. It's called The Wounds.
And I wrote that poem and I documented everything. And I was shocked that I could remember everything.
I wrote that poem just three years ago. And I remembered everything that happened in 2009.
Details. Even I remember the smell of the person who was put next to me in the ambulance.
He didn't have a head at the time. Oh, my Lord.
So I remember the smell. When I started writing, I remember the smell.
I remember the sounds. I remember the blood dripping from my forehead here.
If you can see here, there is a piece of shrapnel. Oh, God, yeah.
No, I can't see that. So, John, I was walking in the street in January.
I think it was January 19th. So I was walking in the street to buy some eggs and bread for my sisters, my little sisters, because we were fasting on that day.
So I was walking in the street and there was a group of people gathering in the street on Al Jala street. This is one of the most famous streets in Gaza.
It's called Al Jala. And it connects some parts of Betlahem with Gaza City.
Okay. So I was, I mean, I saw that there's a gathering of people in the street and I stopped just to see what's happening.
Later, later, later, I realized that there was an airstrike that killed two people and people were gathering, scared to go down in the street to, you know, to move the bodies, put them in an ambulance. So people were scared to go because Israel might have stricken again.

So I was waiting with those people,

looking, trying to see,

and then there was an air strike

in the middle of the people,

in the middle of the gathering.

Seven people were killed.

Seven people were killed.

And I was one of the people who were wounded.

And I remember exactly that

everyone fell down after the air strike.

And I was the only one maybe who remained standing and blood was dripping from my forehead. And there was some pain in my neck.
Maybe you could see some, you know, the piece. Oh, here.
Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Here. I can see, yeah.
So my brother later told me, Musab, there is a hole in your neck. I couldn't see it.
So Musab, there is a hole and you could fit your index finger in it. Your brother is with you.
You guys were together. No, later when they came to the hospital.
Oh, later when he saw you in the hospital. Yeah, I was on the cot and my brother and father came to the hospital and they told me, Musaab, we missed you.
We thought you were killed. We started looking for you in the morgue.
Right. But they found me on the cot and I was, you know, relatively, you know, good compared to other people who lost limbs etc so John for someone like me you know to to to watch a genocide and also documented I am I'm not only a witness I am a victim myself I was I was about to be killed in that airstrike right and it happened many times that I there were airstrikes just close to me later after 2009.
I survived many airstrikes. Our house was bombed in October 2023, just two weeks after we lifted.
And we are lucky because no one was inside the house. Otherwise, my whole family, about 30 people, about 20 of them were children.
Some of them were just months old my my my niece who is now a year and a half living in a tent right now right so i survived many things john so whatever i'm talking about it comes from an experience of someone who was born in a refugee camp and who survived death many times and who lost family members first cousins with whole families so you asked me about hope so i'm just telling you this just to give you a sense that it is impossible to feel hope. But the only hope for me as a human being, as a poet, as an author, is when I share these words, you know, these stories, these experiences with people like you and people outside of Gaza who have never been allowed to go to Gaza.
So that is the sense of hope that I get is when I share the stories with people, because I want people to know what life is like in Gaza in the hope that people will stop that. I mean, when I wrote a poem about my wounds in 2009, so I didn't write it for you, you know, to shed some tears and, oh, you poor people, we sympathize with you.
No, I want you to do something. That's the same thing that the Jewish people during the Holocaust did.
You know, they shared the story. They wrote about it and hope that never again.
We have been writing stories, never again. Please, please free us.
We don't want to live under occupation. So that's the hope.
That's where I get hope. I get hope because I see people, you know, understanding what's happening, feeling what's happening, but that's not enough.
Well, look, Mossad, now you're seeing things, you know, I don't know if you were aware there was the letter that was just written to President Trump from the former head of Mossad, the former head of Shin Bet, which is sort of the intelligence agency domestically for Israel. All saying this has to stop.
Yeah. Does that give you, you know, or do you feel like this is just a repeat of things past and it won't change anything? What are those changes in the international community feel like to you?

John, I will be honest with you.

I will tell you how I feel as a Palestinian refugee, as a victim, as a survivor, as a witness.

This is how I see things. So there are some Israelis who have been outspoken about the Israeli crimes against humanity,

the killing of people, the wiping out of entire families, the decimation of cities and refugee camps. So these people, you know, have been speaking out against these things.
Yet there are some other people who may have spoken out, not because they feel sympathy with the Palestinian people. I can't judge, but my understanding is that they want Israel to stop that because they don't want the world to see Israel as that kind of villain.
So they care about Israel's reputation in the outside world. More than they care about the immorality of it.
I'm not going to judge because only God knows what is in someone's heart. But this is how I understand things.
I think that some Israelis have been speaking out, like Gidwin Levy and other media people, but they are a very tiny minority. So they have been speaking because they know that this should not happen to any human being, even if it's the Palestinians, even if they did something wrong.
But there are some other Israelis, and even not Israelis, who speak out because this is harming Israel. It's not that it is harming the Palestinians for 70s, 70s, but this is harming Israel's reputation.
They're going to say, look at the Jews, what they are doing. This is increasing anti-Semitism.
So they care about how they will look. Self-preservation, right.
Exactly. For me as a Palestinian, if someone, whether it's the former head of Shanbeth or whatever, whoever they are, if they really want the world to see them as people who care about other people, the Palestinian people in this case, they should call for an end to the Israeli occupation for the freedom of the Palestinian people.
We need to enjoy equal rights like anyone in this world. Is that entire, it feels like, it seems like everybody's left it entirely up to Israel and maybe that's the issue.
What is your sense on the ground from Palestinian refugees of the Saudis, Egypt, the Jordanian government, other governments in the area that are allied with the Palestinian cause, it would seem from their statements, but are very passive when it comes to, I don't understand why no one has stepped in to draw a line. Unbelievable.
John, this is unbelievable. It's very shameful that we are watching, you know, the genocide being carried out for 22 months, documented by both the Palestinians who are in Gaza and some of the Israeli soldiers who are documenting their crimes as they blow up cities and counting.
And they, oh, this is a gift for my daughter on her birthday. Yalla, boom, destroy a whole neighborhood.
So it's very shameful that we are watching this, you know, while, so, you know, some other countries who join Palestine, and in this case, Egypt with Gaza, unable to do anything. While if, for example, a missile was coming from Yemen, you find another Arab country like Jordan intercepting that missile.
While no one has been intercepting any of the bombs that Israel has been dropping on Palestinian people on tents in the streets. Why? Mossad, do you have a sense of why? You say that these Arab countries are allied with the Palestinian people? I don't, I mean, people are allied with the Palestinian people.
That's what they say. But governments are, I don't think governments are.
Right. Because if they were, they would do everything in their power, you know, to stop Israel from doing that.
Because we, I mean, Gaza, John, Gaza has had three neighbors, the sea, Israel, and Egypt. Right.
So there is no other country, you know, to flee to. And Egypt has closed the border as well.
Is it because, is it they're afraid of Hamas as well? What's their rationale for? What is Hamas? I don't know. Afraid of Hamas.
Or whatever they refer to as. What does Hamas have even? What kind of weapons does Hamas have? Right.
Well, at this point. So, here, it's similar to what's happening, to what's been happening in Jordan and Lebanon.
These countries do not want to, you know, to have Palestinian refugees for good and bad reasons. They don't want to be responsible for another plight of the Palestinian people, for them to live in Egypt and to move them out of their homeland, which is in this case Gaza.
Even though 70%, John, 70% of the population of Gaza are refugees and their descendants. I am a descendant, I am a grandchild of refugees from Yaffa.
So I'm a refugee. And that's something that Israel hated.
So your family was from Yaffa? Yes, it is the name of my daughter, Yaffa. I have two sons and one daughter.
Give people a sense. Yaffa is in the north of Israel? Where is that geographically? It's in the middle of the coast.
The middle of the coast. Okay.
Yeah. So that's where your family lived before.
Yes. That's one reason why my grandparents went to Shate.
Shate means beach, by the way. Gaza is on the beach and the Shate refugee camp is exactly on the beach.
So that's why my grandfather and one of his brothers went to live in Shati because this is where they used to live, on the beach, right? Right. And they had a beautiful life there.
They did. They lived there for generations.
I never met my grandfather, John. I was born after he died, and I don't know where his grave is.
I don't know his date of birth. Wow.
There are so many things that I want to know about my family who lived in Yaffa just a few, I mean, maybe an hour and a half away from Gaza. There is another shocking thing, John.
I have never been to the West Bank, which is considered the Palestinian territory, right? I'm from Gaza. I've never been to the West Bank.
They're not connected. I don't know people in the West Bank.
I can't talk about the experiences of people in

Ramallah and Nablus and Hebrew, although I see their videos, but I don't know how they live exactly, except from the news. So, and this, the same thing, they don't, they have never been to Gaza.
It's devastating, John. So it's a people divided through that, right? It's devastating, thing John.
Most of in, in, in in in in a perfect world is there a

contiguous how do we extract ourselves and i know that the look you're in the middle of it

and and it's not fair to look to you and say hey what's the way out of this thing other than

but it feels like without the international community stepping in to separate two combatants

Thank you. than, but it feels like without the international community stepping in to separate two combatants and creating some barrier so that two societies can flourish separately, which seems like the only way to do this at this point.
Is there any other way to do this? Yes. Yes.
There is one way. Okay.
Which is when the, when the, when the world, when the world, not only leaders, but also media people, when they start to care about the security of the Palestinian people, the same way they care about the security of Israel. So tell me, tell me, why, why do the Palestinian people not have an army? Well, I assume it's because Israel does not allow them to have an army.
So they have kind of a guerrilla kind of outfit. So who's going to protect the Palestinian people when they are living under occupation? For example, in the West Bank, John, not in Gaza.
The Israeli settlers attack Palestinians. No, Mossab, look, it's an interesting question.
In the West, so here's the question in the West. Doesn't Israel have a right to exist? And doesn't Israel have a right to defend itself? And everybody, yes and yes.
But I imagine the exact same question can be applied to don't the Palestinians have a right to exist? Yes. And don't the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? Yes.
Well, now, okay, now we're cooking with gas here. So what do you do with that, Then that's just a recipe for incessant conflict, one-sided, because one side has very powerful weapons that the United States provides, and the other side does not.
So it just seems inevitable, not to be horrible about this, but inevitable that they are going to continue to force Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas. Yeah.
John, Israel is not the only one responsible for the catastrophe of the Palestinian people 77 years ago. It is the whole world, even the UN, even the UN, even the UN.
Okay. I'm not attacking the UN, but, but I'm going to say that, that the UN...
Attack away. Yeah.
So the UN, by the way, Israel was admitted to the United Nations as a full member in 1949, just one year after it was founded. Palestine, is it a member of the United Nations? It is not.
No. It is not.
Why? Why is Palestine not a part of the United Nations? even though John for your information the Palestine

you know, in the United Nations, the Palestinian mission there, on April, I'm going to read this for you, on April 18, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have recommended Palestine's admission to full UN membership. This action effectively blocked Palestine's application for full member status, which had been submitted in 2011.
Palestine submitted an application to become a full member of the United Nations in 2011, and the United States just a few months ago vetoed that Security Council resolution. So why? I can't understand.
And even other countries, you know, like Canada, like France, like Britain, they recognized Israel, even though, John, this is very important to highlight for everyone. Based on the partition plan, the Jewish state should have had 50% of the Palestinian land.
Even though the Jewish people in 1947, when the partition plan was passed, they only had about 6% of the land. While the Palestinian people who had all of the land, they were given at least 43% because Jerusalem was under international authorities.
so after 1948 after the war the catastrophe in

19... because Jerusalem was under international authorities.

So after 1948, after the catastrophe in 1948,

Israel occupied, you know how much?

78% of the land.

So despite that, even though Israel was occupying more than it was given based on the I mean, based on the partition plan,

it was recognized by other countries.

And it was admitted, you know,

as a full member of the United Nations.

How is the, I mean, can someone explain?

Do you think that was because of Western sympathies?

And, you know, look, there's a,

what I find so kind of hard here is there's a Palestinian history and there's an Israeli history. And the two of them don't really intersect the way that the different people describe the unfairness of the situation.
Or Israel would say, no, we wanted to live in peace. And then everybody attacked us.
And so that's why we had to, and we have to protect ourselves. You know, again, I feel like we've left two people in very difficult situations to fend for themselves.
One of them was supported by the West and armed and became a powerful army. And the other was abandoned by everybody.

It's hard to not see the Palestinians

as having been abandoned by everybody.

Yeah, interesting point.

I have my own say here.

Please.

Yeah, I respect you,

and I know the background of the Jewish people,

but maybe some questions we should ask. So did the Palestinian people play any role in the Holocaust, in the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe? My grandparents, when they were swimming in the sea in Yaffa, did they know even maybe anything about what was happening in Germany? And in Poland? You're saying they faced a penalty and a punishment for something they had no part of.
Yeah. And by the way, some Jewish people were living in Palestine even before the first Zionist Congress.
And I think it was in 1879. So there were some Jewish people who were living in Palestine and no one of them said, oh, we're going to create a state.
So the Jewish people in Europe were faced with horrific, horrific experiences in Europe, not in Palestine, not in Gaza, not in Yaffa. My grandparents and everyone, they did not play any role in the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe.
I mean, thousands of miles away, right? So, of course, everyone should sympathize with the Jewish people, but it should not be on the expense of the Palestinian people.

And by the way, John, Yaffa city, Yaffa as a city, based on the partition plan, it should have been part of the Arab, the Palestinian state.

Right.

So no one is denying that the Jewish people have gone through a Holocaust.

And this is the most heinous war crime in the 20th century. But what about the Nakba? The catastrophe with the Palestinian people that not only resulted in the killing of some Palestinians, but also in their disposition and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, a problem that continues until today.
So let's say the Palestinian people, no one sympathizes with them. And even if they sympathize with the Palestinian people, what is this going to bring about? Part of it, Mossab, is it's the narrative.
We've been raised in a narrative that Israel is a necessary good. We've been raised in Schindler's List and the movie Munich.
And we all watched the terrorism of the early 70s, and the sympathies of the United States and of many people, and I include myself within that because that's how I was raised, was the narrative was, this is a good, an unqualified good, and the other is an unqualified bad. And that's the narrative that everybody has been fighting against since then.
And so as I watch what's unfolding, you have to realize now this is all coming as sort of a head scratching, oh, everything has changed, even though it hasn't, especially in the minds of those that have suffered through the Nakba and through these other injustices. This is not something that I think has been visible for a lot of different reasons.
A, I don't think people wanted to see it. B, I don't think you have the same

website. been visible for a lot of different reasons a i don't think people wanted to see it b i don't think you have the same uh western journalist access it's been restricted yeah uh and so you know i think i think people right now are you've had to endure this for your 30 some years Your's had to endure it for generations.
Unfortunately, many of us are just waking up to it. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I know it is the narrative that many people, especially in this country, have been raised on. But this is not a problem.
I planted a tree there. That was the whole thing.
You know, when you're raised as a Jewish kid in the States, you know, the first thing you do is you got to plant a tree in Israel, apparently like no trees. Yeah.
I may have to go get my tree back, Mosah. You plant a tree in the place of an orange tree that my grandparents, you know, planted centuries ago.
Right, but that's, that part hasn't been, that wasn't explained in Hebrew school. Yeah.
I know, I understand. And I'm sure there's things that aren't explained.
Listen, and I don't want to oversimplify and suggest that like, oh, and, you know, look, armed insurrection and revolutionaries and Hamas and the Islamists, like, that's also incredibly cruel. October 7th, incredibly cruel, horrific.
Just give back the hostage. Like, all of that stuff still applies, but I think it's important to hear that broader perspective from someone like yourself who's been raised in this tragedy.
Yeah. So John, what I'm sharing with you, it's not only my opinion on what's happening be happening.
You know, it is my story. It is me, right? So people talk about Palestine.
So, for example, you bring, you know, guests and other bring guests to talk about Palestine. But what is, just like Peter said, you know, what is equally important is to bring people from there because these people are the story.
We are talking. So people like you and others who are here, they don't have, you know, I wish you could go to Gaza and meet people and talk to them.
I mean, people in the media talk about Palestinians, about the story. But they don't talk to people from there.
It is equally important. I think it's more important to talk to the story itself.
One time I was asked, are you going to tell your children, you know, these stories that you are telling us? I told them, my children are the story. In my poetry, I talk about my children.
One time in May 2021, when Israel attacked Gaza for 11 days, I was filming, okay, it's on my phone. And later I wrote a poem about my son throwing a blanket over my daughter, you know, telling her, you can hide from the bombs because there was some bombing in the background.
So he threw a blanket on her. He said to her, you can hide now.
So my children and me also, we are the story. So the story should be the one who is talking.
I don't like, I mean, that could be the case in the past 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, you know, when people, you know, come to talk about what they see in Palestine, what they hear from there. But it is now the time for the people from there, who lived the experience, for the story itself to speak up.
Mossab, is that one of the hardest things? Because what you see in a lot of Western media is, oh, that's not what happened. That's an exaggeration.
Oh, they're not starving. That's not actually a starving child.
That child has cystic fibrosis. And you're like, well, I think that child has cystic fibrosis and is starving.
You know, is that one of the more difficult things or more frustrating things? Because now that you're not enduring it, being in the States, to see that narrative. Yeah.
John, I'm talking to first-degree family members. Right.
I talked to my parents, to my family. Who are still there.
Yes. I talked to my uncle, Ibrahim, who had a bachelor's degree in English and French literature.
And he was talking to me on the phone back from the Zikkim Aide Crossing. And he described to me what is an apocalyptic scene.
He told me, he went back home to the tent, sorry, not home. He went back home.
He went back to the tent to his wife and their two children, Naim and Sajab, who lived with me in the school shelter before I left. He told me, I saw two things, two people.
One of them was shot in the arm and he was carrying, he was carrying his arm with his other hand. And then there was another old man who was shot in the abdomen and that man took off his shirt to shot the wound.
It's apocalyptic, John. And I post videos on my ex every day of people.
Yesterday, I posted a video of someone who was filming his cousin Haitham Abouarda he was filming the people on the ground after they were shot and other people you think most people you know would stop and carry the those to the hospital there is there are no hospital in the where the aid crossing is coming from so people would continue going to the aid trucks to to get whatever they could so that man was filming at least five, seven people. And then on his camera, you watch it and you listen to him.
Oh, that's Haitham, my cousin. That's his cousin who was killed.
Oh, God. So people in Gaza, my uncle and my relatives, tell me that they are starving.
They are telling me, Musab, my wife's uncle's wife,

told me that she was 70 kilograms before the genocide.

And now she is 40.

She's 40 kilograms.

So she lost 30 kilograms of her weight.

So I'm going, no, you are not starving.

It's still good.

It's still good.

You know what?

Hamas is stealing your aid.

People are starving.

Right. Let the aid in.
Let it in with large quantities. And we know that Hamas is not stealing aid because Israel does not have any evidence.
This is what the Israeli generals and officials say. Even if they were stealing some of the aid, I think they have to get the...
It's a moral imperative to get food. Exactly.
And by the way, Israel is occupying Gaza. So they are responsible for providing.
Hamas is not governing Gaza. Hamas is not an official entity.
It's not a state. Even if they do some things that are wrong, they do not represent the Palestinian people.
But whatever Israel is doing in its army, it represents Israel. And there is something, John, I have to say with all due respect to everyone.
I have so many Jewish friends, you know, my editor, my literary agent. Mostav, you don't have to couch it in anything.
I have, I mean, some of the most amazing people I met in my life are Jewish people. I'm honest.
My editor at the New York is Jewish. My literary agent is Jewish.
The lady with whom I stay when I go to Manhattan. You don't have to qualify.
But, you know, I love the Jewish people so much. So it hurts me when Israel— You're related.
You're cousins. Exactly.
I'm related to you. You're related to me.
Yes, we are. We are related.
And even if we are not Jewish and Palestinian, even if we are just random human beings, we all come from the same father. We're related by the human lineage.
Yes, exactly. So, so, John, what's happening here is that when Israel, you know, says we are the Jewish people, we are protecting the Jewish people.
so it means it means that what they are committing in Gaza right now is by the name

of the Jewish people

yeah

right

because when they say

oh protecting the Jewish people. So it means that what they are committing in Gaza right now is

by the name of the Jewish people. Because when they say, oh, I'm protecting the Jewish people, I'm going to expel 700,000 Palestinians and turn Gaza into refugee camps and then destroy the refugee camps.
So these are Jewish soldiers. But for me as Palestinians, I know that these are not only Jewish.
These are Israelis.

They are Zionists.

For me, I'm not going to say, oh, this Israeli soldier is like John who is in New Jersey

and taking care of his family and opening the eyes of people on what's happening in

America and outside.

So, I'm not going to fall into that trap.

But they, by what they are doing, they are telling everyone in the

world, look, we are Jewish people. Look what we are doing.
We are cutting aid. John, I named it a genocide.
You can go to my Facebook page. I named it a genocide from the fifth day.
I said to the world, stop the genocide. I did not wait for Amnesty International to call it a genocide.
I didn't wait for Beth Salem, the Israeli human rights organization to call it a genocide. I knew, I knew what a genocide is because I knew what Israel was capable of doing and they are doing it.
When they said we are going to cut off food, medicine, water, these are human animals, you should leave. Netanyahu said on October 12th, that was an interview I did with Democracy Now! That same day, Netanyahu said to people of Gaza, people of Gaza, you should leave so what if someone you knew at that point exactly

so democracy now. That same day, Netanyahu said to people of Gaza, people of Gaza, you should leave.
So what if someone knew at that point? Exactly. So October 12th, he said, you should leave.
You understand that if you don't leave, they are going to say, you see, we told them to leave. We are going to kill them.
It means that they are Hamas. These are terrorists.
So I knew, I knew what they were going to do without them doing it. The genocide is not about what not about what Israel is doing.
The genocide is about what they are doing and what they are going to do. And they are doing it for 22 months.
You don't have to wait until someone finishes with the genocide. Mosab, are there any levers of influence within Gaza for these? I imagine it's operating a little bit like Mad Max know, Mad Max, that it's people are just trying to survive.
And then there's some armed, I would assume, guerrilla type gangs and things like that. But is there any, if you were to ask your family, other than, you know, look, we just, we need the international aid.
And do they even think about the politics of it? Like, well, if we could get pressure on Israel to do this or if we could somehow leverage pressure on Hamas to do this, or do they just think I just need food and water and medicine for my children and leave me out of the rest of this? Yeah, I mean, people in Gaza, John, want to live. I mean, they are so tired people in gaza are really tired i mean people i hear it from my relatives in gaza they say i wish i could just die today because i'm gonna die anyway i don't want to die i mean so for example by the way my my father-in-law my wife's father was killed on monday on sunday he was wounded in an air psych while on the way to the toikkim aid crossing.
He was hit with other people by an Israeli drone missile. And two pieces of shabnel pierced his head, landed in the middle of his brain and doctors couldn't operate.
And he died on Sunday. That was just five days ago.
I'm so sorry, Mashaab. So for example, I call him Uncle Jaleel, my father-in-law.

So, I mean, it devastates me. So, just imagine he survived all this time from October 7th until three days ago.
So, he survived all of this time. He survived the starvation.
He went back to his house. He's a strawberry farmer.
They destroyed his strawberry farm. They destroyed his house.
So just imagine, you know,

surviving about 650 days and then to die,

you know, when two pieces of ramifications pierced your head.

So people sometimes say,

oh, you know, I wish I had died, you know,

on October 7th or October 8th.

Why should I have survived all this time

just to be killed like that?

So people want this to end, right? And about the ceasefire, there was a ceasefire in January and Israel broke it, right? There was a chance that the Israeli hostages who must be released today unconditionally along with the Palestinian hostages, everyone, I mean, no one should be kept hostage. You were held in captivity for a while as well, weren't you in Israel? I was abducted from my wife and kids for three days.
And I mean, I didn't have anything on myself. And because of the international pressure, I was released.
But I was, John, I was sexually harassed. I had to undress, remove all my clothes in front of three Israeli soldiers.
Do you call this anything that has to do with sexual harassment?

When you force someone to remove all their clothes in front of three Israeli soldiers?

No one talks about these things.

I'm not called a hostage.

Because I'm Palestinian, I was detained.

I was arrested.

But this is not how you arrest someone.

This is not how you detain someone.

You do not blindfold them. You do not handcuff them.
You do not force them to remove all their clothes. And even they forced me to turn around, even to see all my body from different directions.
And then I was taken to a detention center and I was beaten in the face and beaten in my stomach. And I was denied medical treatment.
I told the Israelis, when they brought us in front of an Israeli doctor, we were still blindfolded and handcuffed. I told them I have some pain in my nose after I was kicked in my nose and I have pain in my ear on which I had a surgery in the US in 2020 during COVID.
So I told them I want some medicine, I want painkiller. And they didn't give me anything.
They just asked me about my name, my phone number, my date. That's the question by the doctor that we had to see.
My phone number, my address in Gaza, my birth of death, my ID number, my ID card number. And then I told him I have pain in my nose.
I have pain in my ear. Can you give me any pain? No, they just, you know, put me back in the detention center.
So they were feeding us, I think maybe a toast or maybe half one and some, a spoonful of yogurt and maybe three, four drops of water. And when we use the toilet, someone had to pick us from the place.
He's one of us, but he's not blindfolded and handcuffed. He would be taking care of all of us, about 100 people.
He would take us to the toilet and there was no toilet paper, no water to clean after yourself. Oh God.
So I lived there for three days, only three days. Look, you know, you're a man of literature.
You're a poet. You're a human being.
You're a Palestinian. You're a father.
You're a husband. How are you not consumed with absolute rage? I I I it's it's so hard to hear any of this and not think this is a nuclear reactor of rage and anger and resentment.
How do you manage that in your own body? Yeah, I stick to my humanity, John. This is the only weapon I have.
How? I keep my humanity in my heart, in myself. I try to be supportive to my wife and three kids here, and also my family and relatives and friends in Gaza.
I support them with everything I can. I call them, how are you? How are you doing? You know, how was your day? You know, people want to talk to us.
People want to talk to us. I talk to them and my father-in-law, God bless his soul.
When he takes the phone, when I talk to him, he starts to make up stories. You know, he just wants to talk to me.
Right. So I try to be as supportive as possible.
You know, people in Gaza have not only been bombed by Israel, have not only have they lost their houses and they were bombed in their tents, but also no one is listening to them. I mean, it is different when a Palestinian journalist, you know, does an interview with someone who lost his son.
And when someone outside of Gaza, you know, a white man like you with beautiful eyes, when you talk talk to them, people would be relieved. You know, I'm talking to someone from America.
You know, he's going to tell Biden and Trump about my my my our demise, you know, our suffering. And of course, of course, he will do something.
You know, you know, he when he tells the story, these people will change their minds and hearts. Israel has been denying the access of international journalists.
And this is another devastating thing, you know, for people like you and others, you know, to see things with their own eyes. And because, you know, it gives us hope, you know, when we see our stories out.
But we need to see people outside from Gaza, outside of Gaza. John, I was in Gaza all my life except for the time I was here to study and do my fellowship.
The only outsiders I saw in Gaza were foreign journalists during the Israeli assaults and some human rights activists or maybe attorneys who come to Gaza maybe to talk to families. But visitors like you, maybe someone who has a friend.
I have, oh, Musab is my friend. I want to visit him in Gaza.
Or I want to, you know, see his family in the refugee camp. Or maybe I want to do a documentary with him.
I've never seen anyone who said, oh, you know, I'm gonna visit here, you know, just maybe I want to swim in the sea. You know, I want to see the strawberries.
I want to see your father-in-law, how he takes care of his strawberry farm. And another shocking thing, I have never seen a passenger plane in the sky over Gaza, John, in my life in Gaza.
The only planes I saw in my life are helicopters, drones, F-16s. I swear to God, you can ask anyone in Gaza.
And nowadays, to be honest, because, you know, I'm a honest guy, there is a new kind of planes

that people are seeing, the aid planes.

But other than that...

Just dropping aid on people.

Dropping.

I mean, the amount of aid these planes are dropping doesn't amount to maybe one truck

or two trucks.

Right.

It's helpless, John.

And these countries with all...

I don't know.

I mean, I don't want to do it with all due respect. but I mean, these countries are, you know, fooling everyone.
They say, oh, we flew some planes, you know, we are dropping food and blah, blah. This is not doing, making any difference.
No, I think when access is finally granted, I think the world is going to be utterly shocked. We did have some glimpse into what's happening in Gaza from the aid planes, you know, when some of the journalists took photos and videos.
We did see. So we are not lying.
This is not propaganda. We are not Hamas.
We are not terrorists. We are not lying when we said Israel is destroying neighborhoods.
When I, every day, I was posting that Israel is blowing up houses in Khan Yunus, in Shajia, Beit Lahya, in Beit Hanoun. That was not propaganda.
This is what we saw in our eyes. And this is what the cameras, the Western media journalists uncovered.
It was true. Everything the Palestinian people said, it was true.
When we posted about the 15 medics who were killed in Rafah in March, we were not lying, John. John, we were not lying.
They found the video. And unfortunately now, the Palestinian people are left without any agency and left helpless.
And there's sort of an idea here like, oh, well, you could just get them to release this and everything would be done. I don't think people understand just what you guys that are living there have been through and the opportunities to have any agency over your lives at all.
Yeah, John, I think what the Palestinian people need immediately is international protection.

That's what I don't understand,

Mosav.

What happened to international peacekeepers?

What happened to just, why is

Israel in charge of this? This makes no

sense to me. This is the one thing that

I just can't wrap my head around.

Get an international... Are you suggesting

that Israel has more power than

Israel?

Right. I mean, I don't understand.
You're anti-Semite. No, no, you're anti-Semite.
I've been called worse. I've been called worse.
No, you can't suggest that Israel has control over international decisions. Right.
Well, that's a different, you know, but that is the part that's really vexing to me and confusing is how there isn't, and I don't, you know, the United States plays a huge role here. It's not, you know, uh, the United States inability to, you know, we sell them weapons and then tell them to go easy with it.
It's like, I used to say, it's like your drug dealer selling you a bunch of cocaine and then going like, but don't stay up all night. Like it's, it's, it's, boy, it's hard to find your way through.
Yeah. I want to say this thing.
So when Israel was attacked on October 7th and some crimes were committed against civilians, and this is, this is, this is very clear. What, what did the world do? They said that Israel has the right to defend itself, but has anyone in the world before October 7th and even after October 7th Did anyone say the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves against the invading and the genocidal Israeli army? What they are committing is a genocide not according to me, but so many other human rights organizations and Israeli Genocide and the Holocaust is color.
So it's it's not it's not something that aware that we are we are throwing here and there Although i described it based on what i saw in gaza at the time and what i knew that israel was going to do so when israel was attacked on october 7th what did the world do they said did they only say that israel has the right to defend itself or and did they stop at that no biden visited the israel tony blinken visited israel many times israel the only state sent so many weapons to. Okay, now let's talk about the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians have been under occupation for 77 years in the West Bank and the Gulf Strip. The Palestinians have been attacked militarily by Israel at least for 22 months.
Now, let's say some countries said the Palestinian people have the right, you know, to protection. Okay, did they do anything about that? No.

No. Okay, Israel committed war crimes.
For example, let me read this. On July 13th, 2025, just a month from now, Israel bombed a group of people collecting water, killing 10 civilians, including six children.
That was on the news, by the way. When mainstream finally spoke out, Israel dismissed it as a technical error.
on July 17th

three four days after that

Israel bumped at church mainstream finally spoke out, Israel dismissed it as a technical error. On July 17th, four days after that, Israel bombed a church, killing three Christians.
Because they were Christians, and because this was the church the late Pope Francis used to call daily before he passed away, Israel issued a statement calling it a stray ammunition. On March 23rd, Israel forces murdered 15 medics, We talked about that in Rafah.
At first, the Israelis claimed that the ambulances were suspicious. But after the video emerged on April 15th, of April 5th, showing clearly marked emergency vehicles under fire, Israel walked back its narrative and it said, you know, calling it a case of professional failures.
And there are many other cases like the World Central Kitchen. Also, they bombed Al-Maghazi refugee camp, I think, late 2024.
And they said, we use the wrong ammunition. They said, we use the wrong ammunition.
So what accountability? One mistake is a mistake. A series of mistakes is a strategy.
And I think what you're saying is these types of crimes are a strategy. It's the strategy that's being deployed against Palestinian people.
But Israel still gets more weapons and it is still covered up by the United States by vetoing many, many UN resolution drafts,

you know,

that call for a release of the hostages and a ceasefire.

It's funny that you say inside the thing that protects you is,

is remaining your humanity,

but it's,

it's hard to feel this situation as anything but an utter failure of

humanity to,

to step in and end what is an absolute disgusting,

Thank you. of humanity to to step in and end what is an absolute disgusting uh display and and horrific and uh it's it's just hard not to view it as an utter failure of our shared yeah sense of of purpose and being and i'm and i'm terribly sorry for what your family is going through and the conditions that have created this for you.
If I can just mention one last thing, just to honor the memory of some of my relatives who were killed in the past 22 months. In two airstrikes, Israel killed more than 50 people from my family and my mother's family.
One airstrike in October 2023, Israel killed 30 members of my family, my father's cousin, his wife, and their children and their grandchildren. 30 people, entire family except for two survivors.
One of these 30 people were my first cousin, Tahrir. She was killed with her disabled husband and their five children, all of them under 15.
In another airstrike, a separate airstrike, in October 2024, a year from that israel carried out an airstrike on my mother's aunt's house. That aunt was my great aunt, Fatima Dibbis, who I used to call my grandmother because my grandmother passed away when I was seven years old.
So my great aunt was killed along with 14 of her family members. One of them was a seven-year-old first cousin of mine.
So John, this genocide that I'm talking about, it's not only carried out against the Palestinian people as a people, but it's also carried out against a population, 70% of whom are refugees, and we talked about that. That's another level of the genocide.
There's a very, very important level of the genocide that I rarely hear anyone talking about,

which is that Israel is wiping out entire families.

So maybe, you know, you are living in, I think,

in New Jersey or New York.

You live with your wife and children,

and maybe your father is living in another state.

Your uncle is living maybe in Europe.

I don't know.

But in Gaza, John, when a family house is bombed, it means a whole generation is gone. I just want to give you one example that the Western media did not cover.
I talked to one of the survivors of a massacre that was carried out in December 2023, and that's called Juhal family.

Maybe it's shocking, maybe it's not,

but around 80 people were killed in that airstrike.

So the thing is not only that 80 people were killed,

but I want to show you who the 80 people were.

I made a family tree here. John, this is the grandfather.
This is the grandfather. These are his children.
They were killed with their wives, and these are their names. They were killed with their children and their grandchildren.
Okay? Then the grandfather himself, he had another brother who was already dead but

the grandfather you know he was he was he died he he wasn't alive but this this brother of the grandfather he lost two sons and their children and the grandchildren here and that's the last grandfather

so three grandparents

these are these are about 80 people so the person I talked to his name is Alice I talked to him on the phone two weeks ago just you know to help me make the family tree and you know what he told me he was going out to buy some food for his kids that was December there were some shops at the time and he told me Mus He was going out to buy some food for his kids. That was December.
There were some shops at the time.

And he told me, Musab, I was out trying to find some food for my wife and kids.

Someone told him, there is an airstrike in your neighborhood.

And then he started running to the neighborhood.

And he found the two houses of the family leveled to the ground.

He lost his wife and their two children

along with the whole family.

This is one.

Number two, he told me

they were able to bury only 50 out of the 80.

So 30 people have been under the rubble

since December 2023,

including his wife and two children.

So that's one of his dreams,

to go back and find whatever remained of his, the bodies of his wife and two children. So that's one of his dreams, to go back and find

whatever remained of the bodies of his wife and children to bury him. John, these are stories, and this is only one story, by the way.
I swear to God, I have other stories that I talk to people there just, you know, to confirm the names and the ages. These are mostly children, mostly children.
so I met two

two girls in Egypt

I evacuated Gaza in December 2023 so I lived in an apartment in Egypt and I don't know there was a miracle because in November Israel bombed a house in Nusairat on November 26th I think it was 23rd, I'm not sure about the date, I forgot. I was not prepared to talk about this story.
So Israel bombed the house where a friend of mine, a fellow teacher was staying with his mother and father, his wife and children, and four sisters. In that airstrike, the father, the mother, my friend Ismail were killed.
Ismail was killed along with his two children. His wife survived.
She's still in Gaza. Two sisters were killed.
Two sisters survived. When I was in Gaza, I met the two sisters because it was about the time I was released and I went to the hospital to see a doctor for my wounds.
And I saw the two sisters just freshly surviving the airstripe. I left Gaza in December and it was a miracle because the two sisters were evacuated to Egypt.
And they happened to be staying in a hospital just two blocks away from where I was staying. And I met them there at the hospital and they became family.
One thing they told me, John, they told me, brother Musab, do you have any friends who could help us go back to Gaza? That was January 2024. Do you have any way, you know, to send us back to Gaza? Because they were, you know, recovering.
And they said, we want to go back to Gaza I told them why why do you want to leave Gaza people are struggling to leave people are paying money to leave and They both told me one of them is a pharmacist. The other is is a teacher Isra and Allah Abu Gaben they are in Egypt right now told him why do you want to go back to Egypt? Sorry, why do you want to go back to Egypt Sorry

Why do you want to go back to Gaza

And they told me

The body of our father

The body of Ismail

And a 16 year old sister

Were still under the rubble

And we want to go back and dig through

And bury them

This is what they told me

I was shocked

And their bodies until today, or whatever remains of them, are under the rubble. And I have a long poem in my collection, Forest of Noise, called Under the Rubble.
This is maybe the most, the expression, the phrase that I say most of the time. Everything is under the rubble, John.
People, people are under the rubble. Our books under the rubble, our clothes under the rubble.
Now our cities are under the rubble. Mossab, thank you for sharing your witness, your testimony, and your, above all, humanity with us on this.
I can't tell you how much I wish for your pain and their pain and the pain in the region to be alleviated in some measure as a testament to humanity being worthwhile as a species

to be protected.

But thank you, and I'm terribly sorry that this conversation had to take place.

Yeah, thank you so much, John.

And I pray for peace, and more importantly, for justice for the Palestinian people, for the plight that they have been going through for decades.

And I pray that, you know, there is a power that's going to stop all of this. But I'm sure that this power is not coming from the outer space.
I hope that the international community would step in and send a peace force, a protection force, whatever it is, you know, to protect the civilian population, the people. I mean, 70% of these people are refugees.
50% are children. What is more reason? Even the people who tried to go to Gaza on the boats, you know, they were taken from the sea.
These people were going to Gaza, not to Israel. Why do you take these people on the boats,

Hamdala and Madhli, why do you take them from the sea

to Israel?

They were not going to Israel, they were going to Gaza.

So even the civilians, the individuals

who tried to do something, they were taken,

they were kidnapped from their boats and taken to Israel.

These people did not want to go to Israel.

They wanted to go to people in Gaza, see them,

help them, whatever.

Every means have been tried tried and the world has failed

the Palestinian people.

Yes.

It's very heartbreaking, you know, for me.

Yes.

When I read, you know, the diaries of Anne Frank,

you know, Premo Levi's survival in Auschwitz,

Knight by Elvizo.

Elvizo.

When I read these things, John, you know,

I read them in the past, but I mean, I sometimes ask myself, what if Anne Frank was writing these diaries every day and she was sending these diaries to publish in the New York Times, the Washington Post, you know, to be read on Fox News or on CNN, you know, and maybe she had the chance to do an interview with you while she was still, with her family and writing. What is happening? Just imagine Iluwissel was writing about how he was standing in line for the Nazis to pick him and his father from the lines to go to the gas chambers.
So imagine if these people were doing that. What lesson did we learn? What lesson did we learn from the Holocaust?

Mossab, it's the question.

It's the question of the decade, of the century, of the millennium.

What lessons do we learn from these Holocausts, from these tragedies?

Thank you so much for joining us.

It's Mossab Abu Toha, a poet and an author and a humanitarian.

And I hope to speak with you again soon.

Shukran.

Thank you so much, John.

Bless you.

Okay.

I really don't know how to end other than I hope you found that episode meaningful. You may not agree with all of it.
You may think there should have been space for other voices, but I think it's important to bear a certain witness in its purest form of that. And I don't know if there is a purer form than somebody holding up pages and pages of family trees that have disappeared from this earth.
So we will be back next week. obviously thanks to lead producer producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear, and our executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray.
And thank you for listening. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast.
It's produced by

Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.