UPDATE: Nov 25, 2023:
This petition continues to be a cry/ a plea/ a demand to the powers that be to help Mosab and his family; what is needed most at this moment is U.S. assistance in expediting his visa. 
Mosab is currently in Gaza with his wife and three children, however, the Israeli Army confiscated their passports, wallets, credit cards, etc., and refused to return them. As such, they have no way to get to Cairo to apply for a visa. Syracuse University has offered Mosab a visiting professorship, thus fulfilling visa requirements, but he and his family are now stranded with no money or ID. Please call or write your senators, particularly if you live in New York State, and ask for their swift attention to this urgent situation. Mosab and his family had been led by the American Embassy to believe that they would be allowed to get out of Gaza at the Rafa crossing, but his family was detained, and Mosab was imprisoned and badly beaten. 

OLDER POSTS:

As of Nov 21, 2023, Mosab has been released from prison, transported to Israel, and then back to Gaza. This still puts Mosab and his family in the precarious position of war.

Please Sign this petition to call on government officials to facilitate safe passage for Mosab, his wife, and their three small children to the United States.


ORIGINAL POST:
On November 20, while trying to evacuate from the north of Gaza with his family, the acclaimed poet, short story writer and essayist Mosab Abu Toha, was separated from his wife and three children and taken into custody by Israel’s Defense Forces. 

Since his youngest son is an American citizen, Abu Toha had been told by U.S, officials that he and his family would be able to leave Gaza through the Rafah Crossing. Instead he was rounded up with many other men at a military checkpoint. At the moment his whereabouts are unknown.

Mosab Abu Toha received his MFA at Syracuse University and from 2019 to 2020 was a visiting poet and librarian-in-residence at Harvard University. His 2022 poetry collection Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear won an American Book Award, as well the Derek Walcott Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza's first English language library.

Abu Toha’s poems and essays have appeared widely in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Nation, and The Progressive, among other publications. During the last five weeks, he has been documenting the human cost of the relentless assault on Gaza. As was true even before October 7, his writing has provided critically important testimony about the reality of life under siege.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvHpWCtbqU