Mosab Abu Toha
Backup: @mosababutohapoet
Pulitzer Prize winner
National Book Critics Circle Award finalist
American Book Award, OPC Award 🥇
speaking: @prhspeakers
On this day last year, I traveled to NYC for a pre-taped interview on MSNBC’s Weekend Primetime to discuss my Pulitzer Prize. I arrived ready to speak about my essays, my life in Gaza, and the mounting losses my wife and I had endured. However, the conversation didn’t start there. That was only the second question I was asked.
The months following that interview brought even deeper grief. In August 2025, my wife lost her father in an Israeli strike. Just a month later, Israel killed my second cousin along with his wife and their four young children, aged ten, six, four, and two.
Between October 2023 and May 2026, my wife and I lost over a hundred relatives.
And we are still asked to humanize our murderers.
And still, academic institutions and other bodies continue to penalize and condemn us simply for speaking out against these heinous crimes.
Shame on you!
I will not bend, I will not bow, and I will not break
“Today we have Mosab Abu Toha with his very important, very famous, book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear. (Refaat smiles) Maybe you will be surprised by the title of the book, but we’ll listen to his story. There is not Palestine here on the cover, but there is everything in it about Palestine and Mosab growing up.”
Refaat, you are in every place, people love you. I wish you were alive to see this all.

Did you know who died today?
Dr. Jamal Naeem.
On January 6, 2024, an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah targeted the shelter of Dr. Jamal Naeem, a leading Gazan dentist and the Former Dean of Dentistry at the University of Palestine.
The strike killed his 87-year-old mother, Rasmiya, as well as his three daughters: Dr. Shima Naeem (a dentist), Dr. Samah Naeem (a dentist), and Batoul Naeem (16 years old), in addition to his three infant grandchildren, Liya (3 years old), Tayseer (3 years old) and Lara (9 months old).
Dr. Jamal Naeem survived with injuries but died today after struggling with cancer.
Photo 3 is of Samah and her infant baby Lara. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

Did you know who died today?
Dr. Jamal Naeem.
On January 6, 2024, an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah targeted the shelter of Dr. Jamal Naeem, a leading Gazan dentist and the Former Dean of Dentistry at the University of Palestine.
The strike killed his 87-year-old mother, Rasmiya, as well as his three daughters: Dr. Shima Naeem (a dentist), Dr. Samah Naeem (a dentist), and Batoul Naeem (16 years old), in addition to his three infant grandchildren, Liya (3 years old), Tayseer (3 years old) and Lara (9 months old).
Dr. Jamal Naeem survived with injuries but died today after struggling with cancer.
Photo 3 is of Samah and her infant baby Lara. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

Did you know who died today?
Dr. Jamal Naeem.
On January 6, 2024, an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah targeted the shelter of Dr. Jamal Naeem, a leading Gazan dentist and the Former Dean of Dentistry at the University of Palestine.
The strike killed his 87-year-old mother, Rasmiya, as well as his three daughters: Dr. Shima Naeem (a dentist), Dr. Samah Naeem (a dentist), and Batoul Naeem (16 years old), in addition to his three infant grandchildren, Liya (3 years old), Tayseer (3 years old) and Lara (9 months old).
Dr. Jamal Naeem survived with injuries but died today after struggling with cancer.
Photo 3 is of Samah and her infant baby Lara. 💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

Israel carried out a terrorist strike on a house in al-Bureij Camp in central Gaza. One Palestinian was killed while at least 4 others were injured, including a child and a woman.

This was part of an essay I published in the New York Times on October 14, 2023. Just read what I wrote. See where we are right now. See what I was asking for.
I was in the Jabalia refugee camp when I wrote and published this.
Exactly two weeks after this piece came out, our house in Beit Lahia was bombed without “warning.” Luckily no one in my family was home. Three weeks after the bombing of our house, I was abducted and tortured for three days by the israeli terrorist soldiers.
Humanity continues to be buried under the rubble.

This photo, featured in @cultured_mag CULT100, was taken in December 2023. I can hardly begin to describe how much has changed between then and now.
If you want to understand even a fraction of that transformation, I invite you to read my poems in both of my books, as well as my essays published in The New Yorker, and others that appeared in The New York Times (before I boycotted its opinion section) and The Washington Post.
The distance between that photograph and this moment is measured not in months, but in loss, grief, survival, and memory.
And please don’t forget to read the interview in the second photo. 🍓💔🍓

This photo, featured in @cultured_mag CULT100, was taken in December 2023. I can hardly begin to describe how much has changed between then and now.
If you want to understand even a fraction of that transformation, I invite you to read my poems in both of my books, as well as my essays published in The New Yorker, and others that appeared in The New York Times (before I boycotted its opinion section) and The Washington Post.
The distance between that photograph and this moment is measured not in months, but in loss, grief, survival, and memory.
And please don’t forget to read the interview in the second photo. 🍓💔🍓

Israeli terrorist naval boats opened fire on the shoreline of Gaza City while also launching flares over the Gaza coast.
It is 3 a.m. in Gaza. Imagine the terror this brings to children and their families trying to sleep in tents along the beach, waking to the sound of gunfire and seeing flares light up the night sky above them.

Israel and its terrorist forces have just killed a 55-year-old man with special needs in eastern Gaza by firing a tank shell at him.
His name was Atef Habib.
His family has been unable to reach him or retrieve his body due to the ongoing danger and attacks in the area.
An Israel terrorist strike near Fras market in Gaza City. At least two people were wounded, one is in critical condition.

You feel like these children were just killed while on a hike.
For much of the Western mainstream media, it does not matter where the murdered children come from: Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, or elsewhere.
As long as Israel is the killer, the headline too often leaves out the most important fact. That israel is the killer, especially of children and women.

Breaking:
At least two Palestinians have been killed in a terrorist israeli strike in Gaza City.
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