Hamas Sympathizer Awarded Pulitzer Prize
Board says award is for New Yorker pieces on “physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience.”
The Pulitzer committee announced that Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet from Gaza, was awarded the top prize in the “commentary” category for essays published in The New Yorker magazine.
The series of articles covered life in Gaza during the war started by the Palestinian terror group Hamas when it led a devastating invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The committee praised Abu Toha, 32, for his “essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year-and-a-half of war with Israel.”
In a post to social media, Abu Toha wrote, “Let it bring hope. Let it be a tale,” quoting the poem of Palestinian author Refaat Alareer, who was killed in December 2023 by an Israeli strike on Gaza.
He went on to list dozens of members of his family who were killed by airstrikes in Gaza, which has been devastated by the war.
“I’m praying for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and JUSTICE and PEACE!” Abu Toha wrote. He made no mention of the Israeli hostages still held by terror groups in Gaza.
The war was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas led more than 5,000 terrorists to invade southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Attackers also abducted 251 people who were taken hostage to Gaza. Of those, 59 remain captive in the Strip, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces.
Abu Toha was detained by the IDF in November 2023 and briefly held. His arrest quickly sparked Western media’s attention, as he had been contributing pieces to The New Yorker and other major outlets since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, painting a dire image of its toll on civilians through his personal experience.
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