TUES 21 NOV
Today a poet was kidnapped.
Mosab Abu Toha. Palestinian poet and essayist and founder of the Edward Said Public Library.
’In 5th grade, I visit the school library.
On one wall next to the door, a poster claims
“If you read books, you live more than one life”
Now I ‘m thirty and whenever I look at faces
Around me, old or young, on the foreheads I read:
If you live in Gaza you die several times.’
An act of self defence? Against poetry? Just like the obliteration of his own library as his home was destroyed in the attack on his neighbourhood in 2014. Or the bombing of his English Department at the Islamic University of Gaza on August 2nd 2014. Words buried. Orwell. Blake. Wordsworth. Dickens. He mourns the characters they contain and the stories and lessons they held. Hearing of this loss, friends started to send books – crowd sourced collections that formed the Edward Said Public Library of Beit Lehia City in Northern Gaza holding 2000 books in English and Arabic. “In the process of building the library, books became my closest friends, offering wisdom, consolation, and hope, and writing itself became the air I breathe.”
I search to find out if that library survives and on the way discover a landscape of libraries turned to dust. Gaza Municipal Library. Rashad Al Shawa Cultural Centre…“The occupation planes targeted and turned the public library building into rubble and destroyed thousands of books, titles and documents recording the city’s history and development, as well as the destruction of the library’s language courses hall and other library facilities,” said a statement Monday from the local government, which also described the destruction of the Shawa center and the municipal printing press.”(Washington Post) Also destroyed is the Diana Tamari Sabbagh Library – the site where hundreds of Palestinian fighters voted in 1998 to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization’s charter of clauses calling for the destruction of Israel. 25 years on and a call for and actual fulfilment of the destruction of Palestine is taking place.
Literary Hub state “The targeted destruction of Gaza’s primary public library is a stark reminder that genocide is about more than just the premeditated mass extinguishing of human life; it’s also about the calculated, and often vindictive, destruction of a people’s culture, language, history, and shared sites of community….a way for Israel to erase all evidence of Palestinian life and Palestinian humanity.”
Returning to his bombed home on 6 November to salvage anything possible Mosab wrote: “I hope to at least find a copy of my own poetry book, maybe near my neighbour’s olive tree, but there is nothing but debris. Nothing but the smell of explosions. Now I sit in my temporary house in the Jabalia camp, waiting for a ceasefire. I feel like I am in a cage. I’m being killed every day with my people. The only two things I can do are panic and breathe. There is no hope here.”
Mosab Abu Toha was detained whilst travelling south towards the Rafah crossing to enter Egypt on the instructions of the US Embassy. The USA. The place where his child was born, where he was Harvard visiting scholar. The place that is home to the authors and words he cherishes from Faulkner to Hemingway is the place sending the bombs that kill. That condones the ceasing of life and breath over a ceasefire.
“Mr chair, the United States does not get to pretend that it stands with the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. It does not get to pretend this when the United States has just approved an additional 14.5 billion dollar military aid package to Israel as Israel pummels Palestinian civilians to the ground most of them refugees and children.
The US is also planning to send 320 million in dollars of precision bombs to Israel according to the wall Street Journal. Can the United States explain how this is in line with any of its obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law, let alone its commitments under the political declaration on explosive weapons in populated areas.
It is unsurprising that the stock prices of weapons manufacturers have sky rocketed over the recent period and continue to rise as Israel bombards Gaza. For example, the market value of the biggest US weapons manufacturers increased by over 23 billion dollars after the 7th October and it is undeniable that the United States profits from war. Throughout its entire history there are only 15 years in which the United States has not been at war with another country. Let that sink in. 15 years only in the United States entire history. But no one neither Israel or the United States nor arms manufacturers should be allowed to profit from the killing or maiming of Palestinian civilians.
So no - you do not get to say you stand with Palestinian civilians until you stop sending arms to Israel as it commits genocide. “
UN address from State of Palestine. UN. Geneva. 13th November 2023.
‘The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my small ear canal of them all.’
Mosab Abu Toha. ‘Things you may find hidden in my ear.’
