The New Yorker: Since the U.S. and Iran agreed to a temporary ceasefire, on Tuesday night, Israel has continued pummelling Lebanon with air strikes, killing more than three hundred people on Wednesday and wounding over a thousand more.

 Israel’s War in Lebanon Has Not Stopped

While America and Iran negotiate a ceasefire, Beirut remains under siege.

 

Photograph by Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Since the U.S. and Iran agreed to a temporary ceasefire, on Tuesday night, Israel has continued pummelling Lebanon with air strikes, killing more than three hundred people on Wednesday and wounding over a thousand more. After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, in February, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary group in Lebanon, fired missiles at Israel; this was followed by a heavy Israeli response across the country, and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel has forced out over a million people from their homes, and killed more than a thousand, in a country of some five million, vowing to hold many of these areas as buffer zones. (The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, has compared the strategy to the one his country used in Gaza.) And the New York Times reported that Israel has recently made allowances for religious groups other than Shia Muslims to remain in the “evacuation zone.” Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon are set to hold talks next week, but Iran and the United States have not yet reached an agreement on whether the ceasefire covers Israeli operations in Lebanon.

I recently spoke by phone with Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center, who lives in Lebanon and was in Beirut when we talked. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what Israel is really trying to accomplish in Lebanon, the changing political fortunes of Hezbollah, and how Lebanese civilians are dealing with the war.

It seems that Israel has attacked areas across Lebanon, including Beirut, with huge civilian populations. Can you talk about what the past few days have been like?

Devastating. It’s not just about the bombs dropping around us but, also, about the anxiety, the frantic calling of friends and family to make sure they’re fine. The areas that were hit were considered relatively safe, to the extent that you can be safe in a war, but they were considered relatively safe. There’s no predominant military presence in these areas.

By military presence, you mean Hezbollah presence?

Hezbollah, yes. And I’m not describing the lack of a military presence to justify that this means it’s O.K. to hit certain areas, but not these areas. But, still, there is no predominant military presence of Hezbollah or any other political/military/non-state actor in these areas. So it was quite a shock to have entire residential buildings flattened in the space of minutes, a hundred air strikes or so in the space of ten minutes across Lebanon. It was really shocking. And then ... READ MORE  https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/israels-war-in-lebanon-has-not-stopped

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

Mosab Abu Toha of Palestine's newest book of poems Forest of Noise

Mosab Abu Toha of Palestine's newest book of poems Forest of Noise

Mosab Abu Toha

@MosabAbuToha

Mosab Abu Toha taught English at United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools in Gaza from 2016 until 2019, and is the founder of the Edward Said Library, the only English-language library in Gaza.^[5] In 2019-20 he was a visitor at Harvard University, as a Scholar-at-Risk Fellow at the Department of Comparative Literature,^[5] a librarian at the Houghton Library, and a fellow in the Harvard Divinity School.

Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press,^[6] and has written from Gaza for The Nation, Literary Hub, the New York Times,^[7] and The New Yorker.^[8]

His poems have been published on the Poetry Foundation website, and in publications which include Poetry Magazine, Banipal, Solstice, The Markaz Review, The New Arab, Peripheries, The New York Review,^[9] The Progressive,^[1] The New Yorker,^[10] and The Atlantic.^[11]

In 2022, he published his first book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (City Lights). It won the Palestine Book Award and an American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Walcott Poetry Prize.^[1] The New York Times said, "Abu Toha’s accomplished debut contrasts scenes of political violence with natural beauty."^[12] For the National Book Critics Circle, Jacob Appel wrote, "What makes Abu Toha’s work resonate so strongly is his gift for the particular. By avoiding panoramic generalizations, he hones in upon evocative images that capture the larger plight of his people."^[13]

In 2023, Abu Toha was appointed to a visiting faculty position at Syracuse University through the Scholars at Risk network.^[14] He is currently serving as an instructor and writer in residence at The American University in Cairo for the Spring 2024 semester.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosab_Abu_Toha

My letter to the New Yorker RE Mosab Abu Toha's A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza

 

letter from Gaza-  Dec 25 2023

Mosab Abu Toha

A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza

Following Hamas’s October 7th attack and Israel’s invasion, Mosab Abu Toha fled his home with his wife and three children. Then I.D.F. soldiers took him into custody.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/01/a-palestinian-poets-perilous-journey-out-of-gaza

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes or watch videos IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Dear Editor,

Thank you for publishing Mosab Abu Toha’s "A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza." 

I know I am not allowed to say this, but Israel's pervasive persecution, impoverishment, and displacement of Palestinians reminds me of Nazi Germany.  And the horrifying fact is that American leadership is fully aligned with funding and arming racist Israel's long term violations of international law and the native non-Jewish Palestinians basic human rights. 

Gaza 2023 is Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass for the people of historic Palestine.

Ending the Israel/Palestine conflict matters immensely. All people need a just and lasting peace based on the rule of fair and just laws, and true equality for all people, regardless of supposed race or religion. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.  But there is a very real need to prove to the world that arming religion with taxpayer's money, lethal weaponry, and the will to kill "others" is a very bad idea. 

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

American Homemaker & Poet

 

From my dear friend Nancy who heard it from Naomi: "Word this morning is that poet Mosab Abu Toha has been kidnapped by Israeli forces"

Mosab Abu Toha - essayist, poet - has been kidnapped by Israeli army in Gaza as he was fleeing with his family.  Diana Buttu  @dianabuttu

 

NOTEBOOKS

"During night airstrikes, all of us turned

into stones"   

poet Mosab Abu Tohu of Gaza, Palestine

from page 86 in his recent riveting book

2022 copyright

Poetry Foundation

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short story writer, and essayist from Gaza. Abu Toha is the author of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022, City Lights), which won a 2022 Palestine Book Award. Abu Toha is the founder of the Edward Said Library, and from 2019 to 2020, he was a visiting poet and librarian-in-residence at Harvard University.

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short story writer, and essayist from Gaza

 

 

2 Poems by Mosab Abu Toha

• my grandfather and home 
•  Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear

&

"Obit," by Mosab Abu Toha | The New Yorker

Nov 6, 2023Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet from Gaza. His début poetry book, "Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear," was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won an American...

 

A Poem by Mosab Abu Toha: 'Younger Than War' - The Atlantic

Nov 9, 2023I saw a helicopter firing a rocket. into a tower as far from me as my frightful cries. when I heard concrete and glass fall from high. Loaves of bread went stale. I was still 7 at the time. I was ...

 

 &

poets.org

Mouth Still Open

Mosab Abu Toha

 

Someone’s mouth is still open. He hadn’t finished yawning
when shrapnel
pierced
through
his chest,
stung his
heart.
No wind
could
stop the
flying pieces
of shrapnel. Even
the sparrow on the lemon tree nearby wondered how they

           could
                               move

                               with
        
                      no
wings

 

Copyright © 2022 by Mosab Abu Toha. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 15, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

 

Goodreads Author

 His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Daily, among others

The New Yorker: The Fight for Jerusalem’s Past, and Future... Archeology is another weapon in the fight over territory.

 August 2, 2013

The Fight for Jerusalem’s Past, and Future

Posted by Sarah Wildman

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/08/the-fight-for-jerusalems-past-and-future.html

This week, with subdued, if earnest, cheer, Secretary of State John Kerry announced the restart of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in Washington. The reaction was about as cynical as coverage of Liz Taylor’s seventh wedding—we’ve been invited to this affair before.

There are valid reasons for that attitude. The question of dividing or even sharing Jerusalem was one of the tripwires that took down peace negotiations in the past. It has never been resolved, and is now more complicated than ever. The history of the city—and its holiness—has always been the sticking point, but in recent years that history has evolved. Parcels of Jerusalem slated for return to Palestinians have become essential to the historical mythology of the city. Archeology is another weapon in the fight over territory.

That phenomenon is seen most clearly in East Jerusalem’s contested neighborhood of Silwan and a slightly smaller section of it known as Ir David, or City of David, which sits in the shadow of the Old City, across the road from the Dung Gate, the entrance to the Old City closest to the Temple Mount.

This was the Biblical core of Jerusalem, a Canaanite town later ruled by Judean kings. But the modern neighbors, above ground, are Palestinian. “Silwan is where Jerusalem was established,” says Yonathan Mizrachi, an archeologist with an organization called Emek Shaveh that protests the politicization of archeology. “What is Jerusalem without the beginning of Jerusalem?” That’s true enough, but in the intervening thousands of years the area has seen settlement by a half-dozen other peoples as well. And though Israelis point to a small group of Yemenite Jews who settled there at the end of the nineteenth century—and were protected by their Arab neighbors during riots in 1929—Silwan remained on the Jordanian side of the Green Line that divided Jerusalem in 1949.

That border meant Silwan was to be returned to the Palestinians under the peace plan negotiated by Bill Clinton at the end of his Presidency. The problem is that below and abutting the Palestinian residences is a massive archeological dig, also called the City of David....READ MORE

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]