British-Israeli Emily Damari, 28, was held hostage by Hamas terrorists for 15 months — and on Thursday, she laid into the Pulitzer Prize Board members for honoring a man who repeatedly sided with her captors in the aftermath of the horrific October 7th attacks.
Damari took to X to write her response to the news that writer Mosab Abu Toha — whose social media was rife with accusations referring to the Israeli hostages as “killers” and questioned forensic reports detailing the brutal murders of Ariel and Kfir Bibas — had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his essays on Gaza.
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
“Dear Members of the @PulitzerPrizes board, My name is Emily Damari,” she wrote. “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,” she continued.
She then turned to address Toha and the prize he’d been awarded, adding, “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,” Damari concluded. “This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it.”
Damari lost two fingers on her left hand when her kidnappers shot her as they dragged her out of her apartment in southern Israel, and for months in captivity the wound did not heal due to the conditions in which she was kept. She was also shot in the leg, and the only medical treatment she was given was an expired bottle of iodine.
She was released as part of a ceasefire deal in January of 2025, after which she underwent surgery to address her injuries.
