Syracuse University professor Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet from Gaza who has become a celebrated member of the left wing literati, announced on Friday he has cancelled a 16 event speaking tour at colleges across the U.S. out of fear of being caught up in the wave of deportations by the Trump administration of radical anti-American foreign policy visa holders at universities.
The caught on video detention on Tuesday by plainclothes ICE agents of a Turkish Tufts University Phd student, Rumeysa Ozturk, targeted for deportation for being an alleged Hamas sympathizer sent shockwaves through the anti-American immigrant university community.
Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE.
A video shared with GBH News shows a man in a hoodie approach her, then grab her wrists. Ozturk screams, then asks “Can I call the police?” before being told “We’re the police.”https://t.co/6dwvEmqjVr@sweetadelinevt @GBHNews pic.twitter.com/NAAgGVpp9G
— Tori Bedford (@Tori_Bedford) March 26, 2025
The 32-year-old Toha noted he does not feel safe leaving his house to pick up his children from school. He has a four or five-year-old son who is an American citizen. Toha fled Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 and was detained by the IDF for several days over suspected Hamas ties as he and his family made their way to the Rafah crossing to enter Egypt. After protests by Western media allies, Toha was freed and made his way to the U.S. with a job offer to teach at Syracuse University, where he had previously studied. (Time excerpt):
This week, Abu Toha’s fears were realized when on Sunday he was abducted by Israeli forces while fleeing south through Gaza to try to evacuate his family. After outcry from Western media companies and publishers including the New Yorker and international rights groups including PEN International over his detention and temporary unknown whereabouts, Abu Toha was released on Tuesday and has reunited with his family in Gaza.
Toha posted Friday, “Unfortunately I had to cancel all my upcoming events in the United States as I felt unsafe traveling, especially after watching students and university professors abducted on the street just in front of other people. I had 16 events scheduled for the next five weeks (at Stanford, Columbia, NYU, and Cornell among other places). You cannot imagine how much I was waiting to meet you all, friends and others. But canceling events is not more heartbreaking than watching Israel’s brutal canceling of my people’s lives in Gaza.
I even don’t feel safe going out to pick up my kids from school. These threats made online against me and my family are vile. And the serious threats and actions against free speech are even more vile.”
Unfortunately I had to cancel all my upcoming events in the United States as I felt unsafe traveling, especially after watching students and university professors abducted on the street just in front of other people. I had 16 events scheduled for the next five weeks (at Stanford,…
— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) March 28, 2025
Toha had been cited by a pro-Israel group Betar USA who included him in a list of “pro-Hamas” student visa holders to the Trump administration, according to a report last month by the Washington Free Beacon (excerpt):
Mosab Abu Toha
Affiliation: Syracuse University
Role: Professor
Territory of Origin: Gaza
A month after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israeli officials detained and questioned Toha, a poet in Gaza, over ties to Hamas. Although he was released after a day, he claimed he was beaten and tortured.
In response to his unsubstantiated allegations, in November 2023, Syracuse bestowed Toha with a visiting faculty appointment through its “Scholars at Risk” program.
Since then, Toha has called for “boycotting Israeli cultural institutions and anyone coming from that part,” suggested the Oct. 7 attacks were Palestinians “retaliating” for Israel’s establishment in 1948, and denounced anyone who mentions Hamas’s mass slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7.
“If one wants to talk about retaliating what happened on October 7, can we at the same time talk about retaliating [for] the massacres of 1948 [and] the ensuing mass exodus of 800,000 people?” he wrote in one X post.
In another post, he wrote: “If anyone mentions to you the words ‘October 7’ or ‘Hostages,’ spit the blood of Gaza kids in their faces.”
Toha confirmed his visa status in an August 2024 Instagram post, which included a poem he said he wrote “right after my visa interview at the American embassy in Jordan.
The Betar spokesman homed in on Toha, calling him “the poster child of exactly who the Trump administration must immediately deport from America.”
“The Israeli military detained him for activities connected to terrorism shortly after the October 7th massacres, and a few weeks later an American university hired him and brought him to America,” he told the Free Beacon. “Since then, he incites against Jews and America calling for revolutions and regular anti-American and Anti-Israel activities.”
More from Time (excerpt):
Who is Mosab Abu Toha?
Abu Toha, who was born in the Al-Shati refugee camp, graduated with a degree in English from the Islamic University of Gaza before founding the Edward Said Library, the enclave’s first English-language public library, in his hometown of Beit Lahia in 2017. (A second branch was opened in Gaza City in 2019). He taught English at U.N. Relief and Works Agency schools in Gaza from 2016 to 2019. In October 2019, he left Gaza for the first time to become a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
Last year, Abu Toha published his debut book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear. It won an American Book Award, Palestine Book Award, and Arrowsmith Press’s 2023 Derek Walcott Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Since the war that began with terrorist group Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Abu Toha has published essays and poems about the situation in Gaza in a number of U.S. publications, including the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and, most recently, the Nation. In social media dispatches, too, he has documented the destruction of his home, the death of one of his students, and periodic updates on his family’s status.
More from Betar USA on Toha, “Mosan Abu Toha must be deported. Brought to America from Gaza on a visa by @SyracuseU after being arrested by the IDF shortly after Oct 7, now he calls for Israel to burn as he supports the “resistance” AKA Hamas and terrorism. @MosabAbuToha is high on our list of those who must be deported immediately!”
Mosan Abu Toha must be deported. Brought to America from Gaza on a visa by @SyracuseU after being arrested by the IDF shortly after Oct 7, now he calls for Israel to burn as he supports the “resistance” AKA Hamas and terrorism. @MosabAbuToha is high on our list of those who must… pic.twitter.com/qKgwvZIAHA
— Betar Worldwide (@Betar_USA) March 21, 2025
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