On Gaza and Humanity with Mosab Abu Toha

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody. It's me, Jon Stewart.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 I think it's 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

Speaker 1 Arab people and Palestinian people, but I really wanted to

Speaker 1 give some time to someone from Gaza, someone whose family is there, who was born there, grew up there,

Speaker 1 and hear that perspective, one that I don't necessarily

Speaker 1 see a lot of. So I'm just going to get in.
He's an incredible writer,

Speaker 1 an incredible poet, the winner of a Pulitzer for his writing. And I'm just going to introduce him.
His name is Mossab Abu Toha.

Speaker 1 He's a poet. He's an author.
And I want to get him in right now.

Speaker 1 uh all right folks so we're gonna talk obviously this is an incredibly fraught situation and a difficult one uh but i became aware of a gentleman whose writings uh i i quite admired as a uh an author and a poet his name is mossab abu toha uh he joins us now mossab uh thank you so much for for joining us and taking some time today thank you so much john looking forward to the conversation Mossab, I wanted to ask you, just for people that are listening at home, just a brief,

Speaker 1 you were born in Gaza.

Speaker 1 Is that correct?

Speaker 2 Yes, I was born in Gaza in a refugee camp called Shat Refugee Camp. Okay.
The same refugee camp where my father was born in 1962.

Speaker 2 And the same refugee camp where my grandparents lived until they died after they were expelled from their homes in 1948 from Jaffa. So that's where I was born.

Speaker 1 This was a refugee camp that became more of a city.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And this is something that is

Speaker 2 outrageous when you see people

Speaker 2 commenting on some of the photos we post of the refugee camps, whether it's the Jabale refugee camp in North Gaza, where my mother was born.

Speaker 2 They say, oh, this is a refugee camp. There are no tents.
But I mean, come on, it's 77 years of occupation, and these people have been living in.

Speaker 2 I mean, you expect people to live in tents for 77 years?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Supposedly, you know, it was, you know, our refugee camp is a temporary place, but it's been 77 years, and there are eight refugee camps in Gaza, John. There is the Shati refugee camp.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there are the Shati refugee camp where I was born.

Speaker 2 Also, my father was born there. There is the Jebali refugee camp in North Gaza.
There is

Speaker 2 one Rafah that Israel erased. And there is one in Nusairat.
You hear

Speaker 2 the name of the city, Nusairat, Guraj Magazi Khan Yunis there are refugee camps in these areas and Israel decimated as far as I know two of them the Jebali refugee camp where my mother was born and also my two grand maternal grandparents were born they they were they were not born during the nakba my maternal grandparents so they were born in the jebal refugee camp and and and i was sheltering in the jebal refugee camp before i had to leave gaza in december 2023 and i look at videos john nothing is left of the refugee camp.

Speaker 2 And the same thing with Rafah, they decimated the whole city, including the refugee camp there.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So they are even

Speaker 2 making the refugee

Speaker 2 experience for the Palestinians a hellish experience. Not only are they made refugees, not only are they killed.
There are some

Speaker 2 Nakba survivors, by the way, John. Right.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 yeah they did not move out out of there they were or were expelled that's i believe because because you know the israelis were using youth euphemism there they would say oh the we are gonna transfer these people or they you know they're the arab countries that invaded israel at the time they asked them to to to leave but i mean come on even if even if these people moved out of their cities like my grandparents in 1948 I mean, if I lived a place, you know, my city or my house, you know, because there is an armed conflict,

Speaker 2 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 most of and i apologize you know

Speaker 1 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 that you wanted to express for that you know i i spent some time in jordan

Speaker 1 and there were in jordan an enormous amount of palestinian refugee camps that had as as you said turned into cities but they are still not really

Speaker 1 Jordanians. They're Palestinian refugees.
There's also, you know, Palestinian camps in Lebanon. There were some, I guess.
In Syria. In Syria.

Speaker 1 How many different enclaves, this all stemmed from

Speaker 1 those in 48

Speaker 1 being driven from that area through the formation of that state?

Speaker 1 Would that be accurate?

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 some of my mother's uncles who are living currently in Jordan, in refugee camps, and they are not citizens of Jordan.

Speaker 2 And sometimes you think of this as a bad thing, and sometimes, you know, oh, no, it's a good thing because these are refugees and they have the right to return.

Speaker 2 So, indeed, there are refugee camps in five areas after 1948. There are eight refugee camps in the Gaza.

Speaker 2 There are more refugee camps in the West Bank, and there are refugee camps in Syria and Jordan and Lebanon and even I think I think the refugee camps in Lebanon are the worst of all. Really?

Speaker 2 If you look at videos, yeah, if you look at videos, people are living in something like, you know,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They don't have the same rights as the other Lebanese people.

Speaker 1 They are not citizens in those. They are not citizens of Lebanon.
They are not citizens of Jordan.

Speaker 2 In Jordan, by the way. Yeah, Jordan, I visited Jordan.
John, I'm going to tell you a lot of things. In Jordan, I visited Jordan for the first time in my life in 2019.
And you know why?

Speaker 2 Because in 2019, I became

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I had to apply for a permit, and the Israelis denied me a permit to go to Jerusalem.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I had to go to Egypt and then from Egypt fly to Jordan. And then that was in 2019.

Speaker 2 It was the first time for me since 2000 to see my aunt, Alia Abu Toha, who was married to my father's cousin and lived

Speaker 2 in Jordan. So it was the first time for me to see my aunt in 19 years at the time.
And then I go into the refugee camp where one of two of my mother's uncles lived after 1967.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 it didn't work. Right?

Speaker 1 Mosab,

Speaker 1 that's something that I think people might not realize.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 throughout this.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And you wanted to go there. It's how far did you say it was? 40 miles?

Speaker 2 From Gaza, where I lived in Bet Lahia, because I was born in the refugee camp. Then, I mean,

Speaker 2 Gaza is very small. Even if I moved to another part, it's maybe 10 miles, five miles away from where I was born.
Okay.

Speaker 2 So I was born in the refugee camp, then at the age of nine, at the age of eight in 2000, we moved to live in Bet Lahya, where some of my family were killed, some of my relatives were killed.

Speaker 2 But anyway, this is not the story right now.

Speaker 2 So I applied for a V, for, for, for a, for a, 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.

Speaker 2 So the closest embassy was in Jerusalem. So I applied for a permit.
So I was denied that permit. Okay, from where I lived in Bet Lahya to Jerusalem, 70 kilometers, 70 kilometers, which is 40 miles.

Speaker 2 40 miles. Which is about, you know, it's about an hour by car.
You know,

Speaker 2 when you travel, it's like, except if it's in New York City, right? It would be like...

Speaker 1 About three hours by car in New York City, but that means,

Speaker 2 yeah, exactly. So,

Speaker 2 so I mean, I was denied that permit.

Speaker 1 And by the way, John, denied, did now, did they mention Mossab security reasons? They did a denial. Oh, security reasons.

Speaker 2 Security. They don't tell you, oh, what is your accuracy?

Speaker 1 They don't want poets. They don't want a poet to go through.

Speaker 2 It's not only me. It's most of people in Gaza.
They say security reasons.

Speaker 2 But they don't tell you

Speaker 2 what your security background is. What is the problem with you? They don't tell you at all.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So, so, John, what happened? 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.

Speaker 2 I would take him on a bus along with a Palestinian security man.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 This is if you had been approved. If you had been approved.

Speaker 1 Okay. So now you haven't been approved.
What do you do?

Speaker 2 So yeah,

Speaker 2 I had to apply for another

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I'll go to a different American embassy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I applied for a new permit and that same trip would take me from Gaza, from the Arizi crossing, to Jordan to the Alembe Bridge on the other side of the country.

Speaker 2 And again, the permit was denied. They did not approve my permit.

Speaker 1 What was the is that another security reason?

Speaker 2 So I have to apply for it for a permit to go to leave Gaza for Egypt and from there fly from Cairo to Amman in Jordan.

Speaker 2 So it's Yanni. By the way, I was 27 years old and that was the first time in my life I left Gaza.

Speaker 1 The first time at 27. Your entire life

Speaker 1 is spent in an area.

Speaker 1 Give people a sense of the size.

Speaker 2 Yes, there Gaza is 141 square miles. It's very small.

Speaker 1 And there's two million people living there. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I used to teach in Bethanun, which is another city that Israel decimated. You look at videos.
And by the way, John, we'll talk about this later.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They are showing you, okay, look at Bethanun. It's decimated.
Look at Huza'a, east of Ghanun.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But no, they themselves are documenting all these things. So I used to teach in Bei Hanoon.
I know that city very well.

Speaker 2 So if you want to travel from North Gaza, Bet Hanoon, to South Gaza, which is Rafah, it wouldn't take you more than 40 minutes by car.

Speaker 2 This is from north to south.

Speaker 1 And that's the top, the northern part of Gaza to the southern part of Gaza, 40-minute drive.

Speaker 2 40, yeah, yeah. I traveled from Beit Hanun to Rafah to the border crossing when I traveled.

Speaker 1 And Rafah is the border crossing that's around with the Egypt area, just to give people a sense of the geography.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 If you want to travel from east Gaza, for example, Shujaiyah neighborhood, which is also disseminated, and you wanted to go to the beach west of Gaza, sometime maybe it would take you 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 It's that narrow. It's a very thin strip.
Very thin. It's very narrow.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 So this is the Gaza we live done. And, you know, despite that.

Speaker 1 And you lived there for your whole life up until 27.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Israel destroyed the only airport that Gaza had, which was built in 1999, it destroyed it in 2000, 2001. So

Speaker 2 that was the only time Palestinians had an airport. It was in Gaza.
Israel destroyed it.

Speaker 1 So when you were born there, this was Israel still

Speaker 1 had settlements within Gaza. This is before,

Speaker 1 I guess, 2006 when they

Speaker 2 2005 they left

Speaker 2 Gaza. It is very ridiculous, Johnny, and you mentioned that.
It is very ridiculous to say we gave up Gaza.

Speaker 2 We gave the Palestinians a chance to. Come on, what a chance did you give the Palestinians, you know, to build a state?

Speaker 2 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 a state

Speaker 2 were 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.

Speaker 2 Oh, we gave them a chance. We left Gaza in 2005, but they built tunnels instead.

Speaker 2 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...

Speaker 2 Even by the way, this is shocking maybe to you as someone who's living in America. We have 5G, right?

Speaker 2 Mobile connection, cell phone, yeah, yeah, yeah, cell phone. Do you know, do you know what kind of connection we have in Gaza? 2G.

Speaker 1 I didn't even know 2G. What is that? Just that's a wire with two paper cups.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's you can't, you can't sell, you can't browse the internet, it's you can't rely on it. It's 2G, Israel has been

Speaker 2 not approving the Palestinians to get

Speaker 2 better than 2G.

Speaker 1 Mossab,

Speaker 1 can you remember a time

Speaker 1 when there was an optimism

Speaker 1 within your life or your community, where you thought, oh, maybe now the boot is being lifted, maybe there will be an opportunity? Or has it always

Speaker 1 within your family, when you talk about the future? I mean, you're a poet. You write these beautiful poems.

Speaker 1 I'm curious

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. This is really a very great question.

Speaker 2 In fact, this is devastating for me to think about because as a poet,

Speaker 2 I wrote about, you know, my experience of being wounded in an airstrike 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.

Speaker 2 I was wounded in January 2009. And the two pieces of shabnil stayed in my head and neck until August.
I had to go through.

Speaker 1 How were you wounded, Mushab, if you don't mind me asking?

Speaker 2 So I was, it was 2000, December 20, 2008, January 2009. Israel attacked Gaza for, I think, 22 days.

Speaker 2 That was one of the biggest attacks on Gaza by Israel. And I was,

Speaker 2 at the time, I was going back from school. I wrote about that in one of my poems.
It's called The Wounds.

Speaker 2 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. Right.

Speaker 2 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, by Lord.
So I remember the smell.

Speaker 2 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 Ishlab.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Yeah.
No, I can't see that.

Speaker 2 So, so, John, I i was walking in that in the street in january i think it was january 19.

Speaker 2 so i was walking in the street to buy some eggs and bread for my sisters my my my little because we were fasting uh on that day so i was walking in the city and there were there was a group of people uh gathering in the street on on al-jala street this is one of the most famous streets in gaza it's called al-jala

Speaker 2 and it connects uh bitlahia some parts of betlahi with gaza city okay so i was i mean i saw that there is a gathering of people in the street and I stopped just to see what's happening.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So people were scared to go because Israel

Speaker 2 might have stricken again. So I was waiting with these people, looking, trying to see, and then there was an airstrike in the middle of the people.

Speaker 1 In the middle of the gathering.

Speaker 2 Seven people were killed.

Speaker 2 Seven more people were killed. And I was one of the people who were wounded.

Speaker 2 And I remember exactly that everyone fell down after the airstrike. 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.

Speaker 2 Maybe you could see some, you know, the piece.

Speaker 1 Oh, here. Right.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here.
I can see, yeah.

Speaker 2 So my brother later told me, Musa'ab, there is a hole in your neck. I couldn't see it.
So Musaab, there's a hole, and you could fit your finger, your index finger in it.

Speaker 1 Your brother is with you.

Speaker 1 You guys were together.

Speaker 2 No, later when they came to the hospital.

Speaker 1 Oh, later when he saw you in the hospital.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was on the cot, and my brother and father came to the hospital, and they told me, Musa,

Speaker 2 we missed you. We thought you were killed.
We started looking for you in the morgue.

Speaker 2 Right? But they found me on the cot, and I was, you know, relatively

Speaker 2 good compared to other people who lost limbs, etc. So, John, for someone like me, you know, to watch a genocide and also document it,

Speaker 2 I'm not only a witness, I am a victim myself.

Speaker 2 I was about to be killed in that airstrike.

Speaker 2 And it happened many times that 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 My niece, who is now a year and a half living in a tent right now.

Speaker 2 So, I survived many things, John.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, when I wrote a poem about my wounds in 2009,

Speaker 2 so I didn't write it for you, you know, to shed some tears and oh, you poor people, we sympathize with you. But no, I want you to do something.

Speaker 2 That's the same thing that the Jewish people during the Holocaust did. You know, they shared the story, they wrote about it in hope that never again.

Speaker 2 We have been writing stories, never again, please, do not, please free us. We don't want to live under occupation.
So that's the hope. That's where I get hope.

Speaker 2 I get hope because I see people, you know,

Speaker 2 understanding what's happening, feeling what's happening. But that's not enough.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 to President Trump from

Speaker 1 the former head of Mossad, the former head of Shinbet, which is sort sort of the intelligence agency

Speaker 1 domestically for Israel, all saying this has to stop.

Speaker 1 Does that give you, you know,

Speaker 1 or do you feel like this is just a repeat of

Speaker 1 things past and it won't change anything? What do those changes in the international community

Speaker 1 feel like to you?

Speaker 2 John,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So there are some Israelis who have been outspoken about the

Speaker 2 Israeli crimes against humanity, the killing of people, the wiping out of entire families, the decimation of cities and refugee camps. So these people

Speaker 2 have been speaking out against these things.

Speaker 2 Yet there are some other people who may

Speaker 2 have spoken out, not because they feel sympathy with the Palestinian people.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 that kind of villain. So they care about Israel's reputation in the outside world.

Speaker 1 More than they care about. I don't judge the morality of it.
Right. Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to judge, you know, because only God knows what is in someone's heart. But this is how I understand things.

Speaker 2 I think that some Israelis, you know, have been speaking out, like Gidwin Levy and other, you know, media people, have been but they are very 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 okay

Speaker 2 but there are some other israelis and even not Israelis who speak out because this is harming Israel it's not it's not that it is harming the Palestinians for seven seven years but this is harming Israel's reputation they're gonna say look at the Jews what they are doing this is influ you know this is uh this is increasing anti-semitism so they care about how

Speaker 1 self-preservation, right?

Speaker 2 Exactly. For me, as a Palestinian, if someone, whether it's the former head of Shanbet or whatever,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 We need to enjoy equal rights like anyone in this world.

Speaker 1 Is that entire? It feels like it's entirely, it seems like everybody's left it entirely up to Israel. And maybe that's the issue.

Speaker 1 What is your sense on the ground from Palestinian refugees of the Saudis, Egypt, the Jordanian government, other governments in the area that are

Speaker 1 allied with the Palestinian cause, it would seem from their statements, but are very passive when it comes to, I don't understand why

Speaker 1 no one has stepped in to

Speaker 1 draw a line.

Speaker 2 Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Yeah, John, this is unbelievable. It's very shameful that we are watching

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Yallah, boom, destroy a whole neighborhood.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 so it's very shameful that we are watching this, you know, while

Speaker 2 so, you know, some other countries who are, who, who, who join Palestine, and in this case, Egypt with Gaza, unable to do anything. While if,

Speaker 2 for example, a missile was coming from Yemen, you find another Arab country like Jordan intercepting that missile.

Speaker 2 While no one has been intercepting any of the bombs that Israel has been dropping on Palestinian people on tents in the streets.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 But most of you are saying that you say that these Arab countries are allied with the Palestinian people? I don't, I mean, people are allied with Palestinian.

Speaker 1 That's what they say.

Speaker 2 But governments aren't. I don't think governments are.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Right. So there is no other country, you know, to flee to.

Speaker 1 And Egypt has closed the border as well. Is it because Mosa, are they, is it they're afraid of Hamas as well? What is the, what's their rationale for what is Hamas?

Speaker 2 I don't know, afraid of Hamas?

Speaker 1 Or whatever they refer to.

Speaker 2 What does Hamas have even?

Speaker 2 What kind of weapons does Hamas have?

Speaker 1 Right, well, at this point.

Speaker 2 So, John, so here it's similar to what's happening to what's been happening in Jordan and Lebanon. These countries do not want to

Speaker 2 have Palestinian refugees for good and bad reasons.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And that's something that Israel hates.

Speaker 1 So your family was from Yaffa?

Speaker 2 Yes. It is the name of my daughter, Yaffa.
I have two sons and one daughter.

Speaker 1 Give people a sense. Yaffa is in the north of Israel.
Is that where is that geographically?

Speaker 2 It's in the middle of the coast.

Speaker 1 The middle of the coast. Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's where your family lived before. Yes.

Speaker 2 That's one reason why my grandparents went to Shatte. Shate means beach, by the way.
Gaza is on the beach, and the Shate refugee camp is exactly on the beach.

Speaker 2 So that's why my grandfather and one of his brothers went to live in Shate because this is where they used to live, on the beach, right?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And they had a beautiful life there.

Speaker 1 They did. They lived there for generations.

Speaker 2 I never met my grandfather, John.

Speaker 2 I was born after he died, and I don't know where his grave is. I don't know his date of birth.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 There is another shocking thing, John. I have never been to the West Bank, which is considered the Palestinian territory, right? Right.
I'm from Gaza. I've never been to the West Bank.

Speaker 2 I don't know people in the West Bank. I can't talk about the experiences of people in Ramallah and Nablus and Hebra, although I see their videos, but I don't know how they live live exactly,

Speaker 2 except from the news. So, and the same thing, they have never been to Gaza.

Speaker 2 It's devastating, John.

Speaker 1 So it's a people divided through that, right?

Speaker 2 It's devastating, John.

Speaker 1 Mossab,

Speaker 1 in a perfect world, is there a contiguous,

Speaker 1 how do we extract ourselves? And I know that the, look, you're in the middle of it. And it's not fair to look to you and say, hey, what's the way out of this thing? Other Other than

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Is there any other way to do this?

Speaker 2 Yes, yes, there is one way,

Speaker 2 which is when the when the when the world when the world

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So tell me, tell me, why do the Palestinian people not have an army?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 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 Palestinian people.

Speaker 1 No, Mosav, 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,

Speaker 1 yes and yes. Okay.
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.

Speaker 1 This is it. Well, now, okay,

Speaker 1 now we're, now we're, now we're cooking with gas here.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Even the UN. Okay, I'm not attacking the UN, but I'm going to say that the UN.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so

Speaker 2 the UN, by the way, Israel was admitted to the United Nations as a full member in 1949,

Speaker 2 just one year after it was founded. Palestine, is it a member of the United Nations?

Speaker 1 It is not.

Speaker 2 It is not. Why? Why is Palestine not a part of the United Nations? Even though, John, for your information,

Speaker 2 the Palestine, Palestine,

Speaker 2 you know, in the United Nations, the Palestinian mission there,

Speaker 2 on April, I'm going to read this for you. On April 18th, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have recommended Palestine's admission to full UN membership.

Speaker 2 This action effectively blocked Palestine's application for full member status, which had been submitted in 2011.

Speaker 2 Palestine submitted

Speaker 2 an application to become a full member of the United United Nations in 2011. And the United States, just a few months ago, vetoed that

Speaker 2 Security Council resolution. So, why? I can't understand.

Speaker 2 And even other countries, like Canada, like France, like Britain, they recognized Israel, even though, John, this is very important to highlight for everyone.

Speaker 2 Based on the partition plan, the Jewish state should have had 50% of the Palestinian land.

Speaker 2 But even though the Jewish people in 1947, when the Partini plan was passed, they only had about 6% of the land.

Speaker 2 While the Palestinian people, who had all of the land, they were given 40, at least 43%, because Jerusalem was under international

Speaker 2 authorities. So after 1948, after the war, the catastrophe in 1948, Israel occupied, you know how much? 78% of the land.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 So despite that, even though Israel was occupying more than it was given during the,

Speaker 2 I mean, based on the partition plan,

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 1 Do you think that was because of Western sympathies? And, you know, look, there's a, what I find so

Speaker 1 kind of. uh

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 different people describe the

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Again, I feel like we've left two

Speaker 1 people.

Speaker 1 in very difficult situations to fend for themselves.

Speaker 1 One of them was supported by the West and armed and became uh a powerful army and the other was abandoned by everybody yeah i i it's hard to not see the palestinians as having been abandoned yeah i by everybody yeah

Speaker 2 interesting point i have i have my own say here um please uh yeah i respect you and i know you know the the the the background of the jewish people but two maybe some questions we should ask so did the palestinian people play any role in the holocaust

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe? Right, right. My grandparents, when they were swimming in the sea in Jaffa, did they know even maybe

Speaker 2 anything about what was happening in Germany?

Speaker 1 You're saying they faced a penalty and a punishment for something they had no part of.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So there were some Jewish people who were living in Palestine, and no one of them, you know, said, oh, we're going to create a state. So the Jewish people in Europe were faced with

Speaker 2 horrific, horrific experiences in Europe, not in Palestine, not in Gaza, not in Jaffa. My grandparents and everyone, they did not play any role in the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe.

Speaker 2 I mean, thousands of miles away, right? So... Of course, everyone should sympathize with the Jewish people, but it should not be

Speaker 2 at the expense of the Palestinian people. And by the way, John, Yaffa city, Yaffa as as a city,

Speaker 2 based on the partition plan, it should have been part of the Arab, the Palestinian state.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 The catastrophe with the Palestinian people that not only resulted in the killing of some Palestinians, but also in the disposition and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, a problem that continues until today.

Speaker 2 So why? 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 be?

Speaker 1 Part of it, Mushab is it's the narrative. You know, we've been raised in a narrative that Israel is a necessary good.

Speaker 1 You know, we've been raised in Schindler's List and the movie Munich, and we all watched, you know, the, the, 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

Speaker 1 the narrative was

Speaker 1 this is a

Speaker 1 this is a good, an unqualified good, and the other is an unqualified bad. And that's the narrative that

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 sort of a head-scratching, oh,

Speaker 1 everything has changed, even though it hasn't, especially in the minds of those that have suffered through the NACBA and through

Speaker 1 these other injustices. This is not something that I think has been visible

Speaker 1 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 Western journalist access. It's been restricted.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 you know, I think people right now are,

Speaker 1 you've had to endure this for your 30-some years. Your family's had to endure it for generations.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, many of us are just waking up to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, I know it is the narrative that many people, especially in this country, have been raised on.

Speaker 2 But this is not.

Speaker 1 Hell, 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.

Speaker 1 Apparently, like, no trees. Yeah.
I may have to go get my tree back, Mosa.

Speaker 2 You plant a tree in the place of an orange tree that my grandparents, you know, planted centuries ago.

Speaker 1 Right, but that's, that part hasn't been, and it wasn't, that wasn't explained in Hebrew school. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I'm sure there's things that aren't explained.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 from someone like yourself who's been raised in this tragedy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, John, you know, what I'm sharing with you, you know, it's not only, you know, my opinion on what's happening or what should be happening.
You know,

Speaker 2 it is my story. It is me, right? So people talk about Palestine.
So, for example, you bring guests, another bring guests to talk about Palestine.

Speaker 2 But what is, just like Peter said, you know, what is what is equally important is to bring people from there because these people are the story.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, people in the media talk about Palestinians, about the story.

Speaker 1 But they don't talk to people from that.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 telling her, you can hide from the bombs because there was some bombing in the background. So he threw a blanket on her.

Speaker 2 He said to her, you can hide now. So

Speaker 2 my children and me also, we are the story. So the story should be the one who is talking.
I don't like...

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But it is now the time for the people from there who lived the experience, for the story itself to speak up. You know?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Is that one of the more difficult things or more frustrating things?

Speaker 1 Because now that you're not enduring it being in the States to see that narrative? Yeah.

Speaker 2 John, I'm talking to

Speaker 2 first-degree family members.

Speaker 2 I talked to my pair, to my father.

Speaker 1 Who are still there?

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 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 Zechim A.D.
Crossing.

Speaker 2 And he described to me what is an apocalyptic scene.

Speaker 2 He told me he he went back home to the tent sorry not home he went back home he went back to the tent to his to his 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 to two people one of them was shot in the in in the arm and he was carrying he was carrying his his arm with his other hand and then there was another old man who was shot in the abdomen and he that man took off his shirt to to to to shut the the wound

Speaker 2 It's apocalyptic zone. And I post videos on my ex every day of people.
Yesterday, I posted a video of someone who was filming his cousin, Haitham Abuarda.

Speaker 2 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 those to the hospital.

Speaker 2 There are no hospitals where the AD crossing is coming from. So people would continue going to the A-trucks to get whatever they could.
So that man was filming at least five, five, seven people.

Speaker 2 And then on his camera, you would sit and you you listen to him oh that's Haitham my cousin that's his cousin who was killed oh god so people in Gaza my my uncle and my relatives tell me that they are starving they are telling me Musaab

Speaker 2 my my wife's

Speaker 2 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 good no no no you are you are not starving it's still good it's still good.

Speaker 2 You know what? Hamas is stealing your aid.

Speaker 2 People are starving.

Speaker 2 Let the aid in.

Speaker 2 Let it end with large quantities.

Speaker 2 And we know that Hamas is not stealing it because Israel does not have any evidence, right? This is what the Israeli generals and officials are.

Speaker 1 Even if they were stealing some of the aid, even if, exactly, even if.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a moral imperative to get.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Even if they do some things that are wrong, they do not represent the Palestinian people. But whatever Israel is doing and its army, it represents Israel.

Speaker 2 And there is something, John, I have to say, with all

Speaker 2 due respect to everyone, I have so many Jewish friends, you know, my editor, my literary Asian, most of you don't know.

Speaker 1 You don't have to couch it in anything.

Speaker 2 I have, I mean, some of the most amazing people I met in my life are Jewish people.

Speaker 2 I'm honest. My editor is

Speaker 2 my literary agent.

Speaker 1 The lady with whom I stay when I go to Manhattan. You don't have to qualify it.

Speaker 2 But you know,

Speaker 2 I love the Jewish people so much. So it hurts me.

Speaker 1 Related, you're cousins.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I'm related to you.
You're related to people.

Speaker 2 Yes, we are. We are related.
And even if we are not Jewish and Palestinian, even if we are just random human beings,

Speaker 2 we all come from the same father.

Speaker 2 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 we are committing in gaza right now is is is is is by the name of the jewish people yeah right because when they say oh i'm protecting the jewish people i'm gonna expel 700 000 palestinians and turn gaza into refugee camps and then destroy the refugee camps so these are jewish soldiers.

Speaker 2 But for me, as Palestinians, I know, as a Palestinian, I know that these are not only Jewish. These are Israelis.
They are Zionists. For me, I'm not going to say, oh,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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 ahead.

Speaker 2 john i named it a genocide you can go to my facebook page i named it a genocide from the fifth day right 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 b'thselem 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.

Speaker 2 Netanyahu said on October 12th, that was an interview I did with democracy now that same day netanyahu said to people in 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 we are gonna say you see we told them to leave we are gonna 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.

Speaker 2 The genocide is 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.

Speaker 2 You haven't, you don't have to wait until someone finishes with the genocide.

Speaker 1 Mossab, are there any levers of influence within Gaza for these? I imagine it's operating a little bit like Mad Max, that it's people are just trying to survive.

Speaker 1 And then there's some armed, I would assume, guerrilla type gangs and things like that. But is there any,

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, people in Gaza don't want to live. I mean, they are so tired.
People in Gaza are really tired.

Speaker 2 I mean, people, I hear it from my relatives in Gaza, they say, I wish I could just die today because I'm going to die anyway. I don't want to die.

Speaker 2 I mean, so, for example, by the way, my father-in-law, my wife's father, was killed on Sunday. He was wounded in an air psych while on the way

Speaker 2 to the Zakim aid crossing. He was hit with other people by an Israeli drone missile.
And two pieces of shrapnel pierced his head, landed in the middle of his brain, and doctors couldn't operate.

Speaker 2 And he died on Sunday. That was just five days ago.

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry, Mashad.

Speaker 2 So, for example, my uncle, I call him Uncle Jalil, my father-in-law. So, if all I mean, it devastates me.
So, just imagine he survived all this time from October 7th until three days ago.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They destroyed his house. So, just imagine, you know, surviving about 650 days and then to die, you know, when two pieces of hammer pierced your head.
So people sometimes say, oh, you know, I wish

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 So people want this to end, right? And about the ceasefire, there was a ceasefire in January and Israeli broke it. Right?

Speaker 2 There was a time, there was a chance that the Israeli hostages who must be released today unconditionally along with the Palestinian hostages.

Speaker 2 everyone i mean no no one should be kept hostage you were held in captivity for a while as well weren't you and i was i was abducted from my wife and kids for three days and it's i'm 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 three israeli soldiers right 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I was denied medical treatment. I told the Israelis

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 on which I had a surgery in the US in 2020 during COVID.

Speaker 2 So I told them

Speaker 2 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 of that, the question by the doctor that we had to see.

Speaker 2 My phone number, my address in Gaza, my birth of date, my ID number, my ID card number.

Speaker 2 And then I told them, 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.

Speaker 2 So they were feeding us, I think, maybe a toast. or maybe half half half one and some a spoonful of yogurt

Speaker 2 and maybe three, four drops of water. And when we used the toilet, someone had to pick us from

Speaker 2 the place.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 and there was no toilet paper, no water to clean after yourself.

Speaker 2 So I lived there for three days.

Speaker 1 Only three days.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You're a husband.

Speaker 1 How are you not consumed with

Speaker 1 absolute rage?

Speaker 1 It's so hard to hear any of this and not think

Speaker 1 this is a nuclear reactor of rage and anger and resentment that

Speaker 1 how do you manage that in your own body?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I stick to my humanity, John. This is the only weapon I have.
How? I keep my humanity in my heart,

Speaker 2 in myself. I try to be a supportive to my family, 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?

Speaker 2 How are you doing? You know, how was your day? You know, people want to talk to us.

Speaker 2 People want to talk to us i talk to them and my father-in-law god bless his soul when 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 the in gaza have not only been bombed by israel have not

Speaker 2 lost have not only have they lost their houses and they were bombed in their tents but also no one 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.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 from when someone outside of Gaza, you know, a white man like you with beautiful eyes, when you talk to them, people would be relieved.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And of course, of course, he will do something, you know, you know, when he tells the story, these people will change their minds and hearts. So Israel has been denying the access.

Speaker 2 of international journalists. And this is another devastating thing, you know, for people like you and others, you know, to

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 I was in Gaza all my life, except for the time I was here to study and do my fellowship.

Speaker 2 The only outsiders I saw in Gaza were foreign journalists during the Israeli assaults and some human rights

Speaker 2 activists or maybe attorneys who come to Gaza maybe to talk to families. But visitors like you, maybe someone who wants, you know, has a friend.
I have, oh, my Musab is my friend.

Speaker 2 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 them.

Speaker 2 I've never seen anyone who said, oh, you know, I'm going to visit here. You know, just maybe I want to swim in the sea.
You know, I want to see the strawberries.

Speaker 2 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, Gaza, John, in my life, in Gaza.

Speaker 2 The only planes I saw in my life are helicopters, drones, F-16s. I swear to God, you can ask anyone in Gaza.

Speaker 2 And nowadays, to be honest, because I'm an honest guy, there is a new kind of planes that people are seeing, the aid planes.

Speaker 1 Just dropping aid over there.

Speaker 2 I mean, the amount of aid these planes are dropping doesn't amount to maybe one truck or two trucks.

Speaker 2 It's helpless, John. And these countries, with all, I don't know.
I mean, I don't want to do all due respect, but I mean, these countries are, you know, fooling everyone.

Speaker 2 They say, oh, we flew some planes, you know, we are dropping food and blah, blah. This is not doing, making any difference.

Speaker 1 No, I think when access is finally granted, I think the world is going to be utterly shocked.

Speaker 2 We did have some glimpse into what's happening in Gaza from

Speaker 2 the aid planes, you know, where

Speaker 2 when some of of the journalists, you know, took photos and videos. We did see.
So we are not lying. This is not propaganda.
We are not Hamas. We are not terrorists.

Speaker 2 We are not lying when we said Israel is destroying neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 When I, every day, I was posting that Israel is blowing up houses in Khan Yunis, in Tujaya, in Betlah, in Bethanun. That was not propaganda.
This is what we saw

Speaker 2 in our eyes. And this is what the cameras, the Western media journalists, uncovered.
It was true.

Speaker 2 Everything the Palestinian people said, it was true when When we posted about the 15 medics who were killed in Gafar in March,

Speaker 2 we were not lying,

Speaker 2 John. We were not lying.

Speaker 1 They found the video. And unfortunately, now the Palestinian people are

Speaker 1 left without any agency and left helpless. And there's sort of an idea here: like, oh, well, you could just get

Speaker 1 them to release this, and everything would be done. I don't think people understand

Speaker 1 just what you guys that are living there have been through and

Speaker 1 the opportunities to

Speaker 1 to have any agency over your over your lives yeah at all yeah John I think what the Palestinian people need immediately is

Speaker 1 is international protection that's that's what I don't understand Mossad that I yeah what happened to international peacekeep 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 an israel

Speaker 1 right i mean i don't understand you're anti-semite no no you're anti-semite no i'm not i've been calling i've been you can't suggest 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.

Speaker 1 It's not, you know,

Speaker 1 the United States' inability to, you know, we sell them weapons and then tell them to go easy with it.

Speaker 1 It's like, I used to say it's like your drug dealer selling you a punch of cocaine and then going like, but don't stay up all night. Like, it's,

Speaker 1 it's, it's,

Speaker 1 boy, it's hard to find your way through.

Speaker 2 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 um

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 genocide and the holocaust scholars so it's it's not it's not something 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?

Speaker 2 They said, did they only say that Israel has the right to defend itself? And did they stop at that? No.

Speaker 2 Biden visited Israel. Tony Plin visited Israel many times.

Speaker 2 The United States sent so many weapons to Israel. Okay, now let's talk about the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians have been under occupation for 77 years in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Speaker 2 The Palestinians have been attacked militarily by Israel at least for 22 months. Now, let's say some country said the Palestinian people have the right, you know, to protection.

Speaker 2 Okay, did they do anything about that?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No. Okay, Israel committed war crimes.
For example, let me read this.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 When mainstream finally spoke out, Israel dismissed it as a technical error.

Speaker 2 On July 17th,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Israel issued a statement calling it a stray ammunition. On March 23rd, Israel forces murdered 15 middicks, we talked about that, in Rafah.

Speaker 2 At first, they claimed the Israelis claimed that the ambulances were suspicious. But after the video emerged on April 15th,

Speaker 2 of April 5th, showing clearly marked emergency vehicles vehicles under fire, Israel walked back its narrative and it said, you know, calling it a case of professional failures.

Speaker 2 And there are many other cases like the World Central Kitchen.

Speaker 2 Also, they bombed Al-Maghaz refugee camp, I think, late 2024.

Speaker 2 And they said, we use the wrong ammunition. They said we used the wrong ammunition.
So what accountability?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's the strategy that's being deployed against Palestinian people.

Speaker 2 But Israel still gets more weapons and it is still covered up by the United States by vetoing many UN resolution drafts, you know, that call for a release of the hostages and a ceasefire.

Speaker 1 It's funny that you say inside the thing that protects you is

Speaker 1 remaining your humanity, but it's hard to feel this situation as anything but an utter failure of humanity

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 step in and end

Speaker 1 what is an absolute disgusting

Speaker 1 display and horrific. And

Speaker 1 it's just hard not to view it as an utter failure of our shared

Speaker 1 sense of purpose and being.

Speaker 1 And I'm terribly sorry for what your family is going through and the conditions that have created this

Speaker 2 for you.

Speaker 2 If I can just mention one last thing, you know, just to honor the memory of some of my relatives who were killed in the past 22 months.

Speaker 2 In two airstrikes, Israel killed more than 50 people from my family and my mother's family. One airstrike in

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 In another airstrike, a separate airstrike, in October 2024,

Speaker 2 a year from that, Israel carried out an airstrike on my mother's aunt's house.

Speaker 2 That aunt was my great aunt, Fatima Dibis, who I used to call my grandmother, because my grandmother passed away when I was seven years old.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And we talked about that.

Speaker 2 That's another level of the genocide. There is a very, very important level of the genocide that I rarely hear anyone talking about, which is that Israel is wiping out entire families.

Speaker 2 So maybe, you know, you are living in, I think, in New Jersey or New York.

Speaker 2 You live with your wife and children, and maybe your father is living in another state, your uncle is living in maybe in Europe, I don't know. But in Gaza, John,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I talked to one of the survivors of a massacre that was carried out in December 2023, and that's called Joha Family.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's shocking, maybe it's not, but 80 people, around 80 people, were killed in that airstrike. So the thing is not

Speaker 2 only that 80 people were killed. But I want to show you who the 80 people were.

Speaker 2 I made a family tree here.

Speaker 2 John, this is the grandfather. This is the grandfather.
These are his children. They were killed with their wives, and these are

Speaker 2 their names.

Speaker 2 They were killed with their children and their grandchildren.

Speaker 1 Okay?

Speaker 2 Then the grandfather himself,

Speaker 2 he had another brother

Speaker 2 who was already dead, but the grandfather, you know,

Speaker 2 he wasn't alive. But this brother, the grandfather, he lost two sons and their children and the grandchildren here.

Speaker 2 And that's the last grandfather. So three grandparents.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 Mushab I was out buying some

Speaker 2 trying to find some food for my wife and kids

Speaker 2 he someone told him there is there is a there was there is an airstrike in your neighborhood and then he

Speaker 2 he he he started running to the to the neighborhood and he found the two houses of the family level to the ground. He lost his wife and their two children along with the whole family.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So that's one of his dreams, to go back and find whatever remained of the bodies of his wife and children to bury them.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 These are mostly children. Mostly children.

Speaker 2 So I met 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

Speaker 2 a house in Nusairat

Speaker 2 on November 26th,

Speaker 2 or maybe 20, I think it was 23rd. I'm not sure about the date.
I forgot. I was not prepared to talk about this story.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 Israel bombed the house where a friend of mine, a fellow teacher, was staying with his mother and father, his wife and children, and

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I saw the two sisters just freshly surviving the airstrike. I left Gaza in December and it was a miracle because the two sisters were evacuated to Egypt.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 One thing they told me, John, they told me, Brother Musaab, do you have any

Speaker 2 friends who could help us go back to Gaza? That was January 2024.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 People are struggling to leave. People are paying money to leave.

Speaker 2 And they both told me, one of them is a pharmacist, the other is a teacher. Isra and

Speaker 2 Abu Ghabin. They are in egypt right now told them why do you want to go back to egypt

Speaker 2 sorry why do you want to go back to gaza

Speaker 2 and they told me 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

Speaker 2 This is what they told. I was shocked.

Speaker 2 And their bodies until today, or whatever remained 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

Speaker 2 the expression, the phrase that I say most of the time. Everything is under the rubble, John.

Speaker 2 People are under the rubble. Our books are under the rubble.
Our clothes under the rubble.

Speaker 2 Now our cities are under the rubble.

Speaker 1 Mossab,

Speaker 1 thank you for

Speaker 1 sharing your witness, your testimony, and your, above all, humanity

Speaker 1 with us on this.

Speaker 1 I can't tell you

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 humanity being worthwhile as a species to be protected. But

Speaker 1 thank you. And I'm terribly sorry that this conversation had to take place.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thank you so much, John. And I pray for peace and

Speaker 2 more importantly, for justice for the Palestinian people, for the plight that they have been going through for decades.

Speaker 2 And I pray that

Speaker 2 there is a power that's going to stop all of this, but I'm sure that this power is not

Speaker 2 coming from the outer space.

Speaker 2 I hope that the international community would step in and send a police force, a protection force, whatever it is, you know, to protect the civilian population, the people. I mean,

Speaker 2 70% of these people are refugees. 50% are children.

Speaker 2 What is more reasonable? Even the people who try to go to Gaza on the boats, you know,

Speaker 2 they were taken from the sea. These people were going to Gaza, not to Israel.
Why do you take these people on the boats, Handala and Madli? Why do you take them from the sea to Israel?

Speaker 2 They were not going to Israel. They They were going to Gaza.

Speaker 2 So even the civilians, the individuals who tried to do something,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Every means have been tried, and the world has failed the Palestinian people.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 It's very heartbreaking, you know, for me. Yes.

Speaker 2 You know, when I read, you know, the diaries of Anne Frank, you know, Premo Livi's survivor in Auschwitz, night by by Ilo Viesel when I read things when I read these things John you know I read them in the past but I mean I sometimes ask myself what what if you know Anne Frank

Speaker 2 was was writing these diaries every day and she was sending these diaries in the new top to be published in the New York Times the Washington Post you know to be read and on Fox News or on CNN you know and maybe she had the chance to do an interview with you while she was still you know hiding with her family right and writing

Speaker 2 what is happening you know just imagine iloviser was was writing about how he was standing in line for the nazis you know to pick him and his father you know from the lions to be to go to the gas chamber so imagine if these people were doing that so what lesson did we learn what lesson did we learn from the holocaust yeah

Speaker 1 mossab it's it's the question it's the question of the decade of the century of the millennium.

Speaker 1 What lessons do we learn from these Holocaust, from these tragedies?

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for joining us. It's Mosab Abu Toha, a poet and an author and a humanitarian.
And

Speaker 1 I hope to speak with you again soon.

Speaker 2 Shokaram. Thank you so much, John.
Bless you.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 really don't know.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 bear certain witness

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 disappeared from this earth. So

Speaker 1 we will be back

Speaker 1 next

Speaker 1 week, obviously.

Speaker 1 Thanks to lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer Rob Patoll, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear, and our executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 thank you for listening.

Speaker 1 The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a comedy central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

Speaker 2 Paramount Podcasts.