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Growing up in Gaza, Mosab Abu Toha wasn\u2019t used to seeing Israeli soldiers in person. \u201cYou are bombed from the sky. You are bombed by tanks. You do not see the people, the soldiers who are killing you and your family,\u201d he tells David Remnick. Abu Toha is a poet educated in the United States, who has contributed to The New Yorker from Gaza since Israel launched its bombardment after the October 7th Hamas attack. As Abu Toha and his family tried to flee Gaza, he was stopped by Israeli forces, taken from his wife and kids, and wrongly accused of being a Hamas activist.\xa0 He describes being stripped naked and beaten in detention. \u201cI kept saying, \u2018Someone please talk to me,\u2019 \u201d Abu Toha recalls. After an interrogation, he was released, but with a more pessimistic view of the possibility for peace. \u201cIn Gaza, even a child who is six or three or four years old, is no longer a child. They are not living their childhood. They are not children. They are not learning how to speak English, how to draw; they\u2019re just learning how to survive,\u201d he tells Remnick. \u201cThis future cannot be built on a land that is covered with blood and bones.\u201d