PEN International ‘deeply concerned’ by Palestinian poet’s reported arrest by Israeli forces
CNN —
A Palestinian writer and poet who had been contributing to The New Yorker and
other publications with reflections on
his life inside Gaza during the war has been detained by the Israeli military, according to his brother.
Mosab Abu Toha was taken into custody by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “when he reached the checkpoint while leaving from the north to the south” of Gaza, his brother Hamza Abu Toha said in a Facebook post Monday.
“His wife and children entered the south, and the army arrested my brother Mosab,” Hamza Abu Toha wrote on Facebook. “We have no information about him. It is worth mentioning that the American embassy sent him and his family to travel through the Rafah crossing.”
The circumstances of Abu Toha’s arrest are unclear. CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment. A US State Department spokesman earlier said he didn’t have information to share on the situation.
An American Book Award winner and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his debut poetry book, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” Mosab Abu Toha, 30, had written searingly about the Israeli airstrikes that have decimated Gaza since war broke out last month between Israel and Hamas.
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PEN International, the global association of writers, said Monday that it is “deeply concerned” about Abu Toha.
“We join calls demanding to know his whereabouts and the reasons for his detention,” PEN said in a statement posted to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
The New York Review of Books also posted about his reported detention on X, noting that “in May we published his poem “What a Gazan Should Do During an Israeli Air Strike.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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A friend of Abu Toha, Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, said: “His son, who was born in America, was cleared to be evacuated a couple of weeks ago, but Mosab’s name was not on the list.”
“Eventually, they got his name and his wife’s name and the other kids on the list, and they were waiting to get out when it was safe,” Buttu said. “They were trying to evacuate from the north to the south, when they were stopped at a checkpoint with a lot of others. They were told to lift their arms to show they didn’t have anything. Mosab was ordered to put his son down and then the army grabbed him, along with a lot of other men, 200, his wife said. His wife has not heard from him since.”
Neither the US state department nor the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), responded to requests for comment.
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The American Book Award winner was said to be heading south for the Rafah crossing when he was picked up at a checkpoint
www.theguardian.com
