Earlier this week the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary was awarded to “Palestinian poet”/Hamas apologist Mosab Abu Toha for his work in the New Yorker—”deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir,” as the Pulitzer board put it—depicting the evils of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. David Harsanyi steps back to observe that the prizes have become a sad joke.About the award to Mosab Abu Toha, Harsanyi writes: “It is unsurprising, because the Pulitzer Prizes have become an irremediable joke.”
The editors of the Washington Free Beacon condemned the award in a biting editorial that emphasized its connection to Columbia University. The editorial noted:
It took just more than 24 hours for Abu Toha’s public statements defending the atrocities of Oct. 7 and assailing the Israeli victims of those attacks to surface. (“How on earth is this girl called a hostage?” he wrote of Emily Damari, a 28-year-old IDF soldier abducted by Hamas. He objected to the media’s humanization of Israeli “hostage” Agam Berger: “These are the ones the world wants to share sympathy for, killers who join the army and have family in the army!”)
Somehow the intrepid reporters on the Pulitzer Prize board missed them. Huh.
Ms. Damari herself took to X to address the Pulitzer board directly:
Dear Members of the @PulitzerPrizes board,
My name is Emily Damari. I was held hostage in Gaza for over 500 days.
On the morning of October 7, I was at home in my small studio apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas terrorists burst in, shot me and dragged me across the border into Gaza. I was one of 251 men, women, children, and elderly people kidnapped that day from their beds, their homes, and a music festival.
For almost 500 days I lived in terror. I was starved, abused, and treated like I was less than human. I watched friends suffer. I watched hope dim. And even now, after returning home, I carry that darkness with me – because my best friends, Gali and Ziv Berman are still being held in the Hamas terror tunnels.
So imagine my shock and pain when I saw that you awarded a Pulitzer Prize to Mosab Abu Toha.
This is a man who, in January, questioned the very fact of my captivity. He posted about me on Facebook and asked, “How on earth is this girl called a hostage?” He has denied the murder of the Bibas family. He has questioned whether Agam Berger was truly a hostage. These are not word games – they are outright denials of documented atrocities.
You claim to honor journalism that upholds truth, democracy, and human dignity. And yet you have chosen to elevate a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered.
Do you not see what this means? Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer. He is the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And by honoring him, you have joined him in the shadows of denial.
This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it.
Dear Members of the @PulitzerPrizes board,
My name is Emily Damari. I was held hostage in Gaza for over 500 days.
On the morning of October 7, I was at home in my small studio apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas terrorists burst in, shot me and dragged me across the border…
— Emily Damari (@EmilyDamari1) May 8, 2025
