The Pulitzer Prize was awarded this week to a Gazan poet who excused the abduction of Israelis by Hamas, HonestReporting revealed on Tuesday (May 6), while calling for the prestigious award to be rescinded.
Mosab Abu Toha, who also spread antisemitic content and fake news on his social media platforms, won the top honor in journalism on Monday (May 5) for his essays published in the New Yorker describing the ongoing war in the enclave.
But it seems that both the magazine and the Pulitzer committee failed to check Abu Toha’s virulent social media posts against Israeli hostages whom Hamas brutally abducted on October 7, 2023.
HonestReporting exclusively shared these posts with Fox News Digital, which reached out to Abu Toha, The New Yorker, and the Pulitzer Prize organization for comment.
Meet Pulitzer Prize winner Mosab Abu Toha. He justifies the kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7.
We aren’t going to congratulate him for his prize. Instead, we’re going to ask @PulitzerPrizes whether they bothered to check his social media.
Because we did, and it’s not pretty. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/qQAMQGi0IK
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 7, 2025
“How is this girl called a hostage?”
Abu Toha, who currently lives in the U.S., specifically disparaged female Israeli hostages, questioned their hostage status and implicitly justified their abduction.
Toha posted the following about Israeli hostage Emily Damari on January 24, 2025:
How on earth is this girl called a hostage? (And this is the case of most ‘hostages’). This is Emily Damari, a 28 UK-Israeli soldier that Hamas detailed on 10/7… So this girl is called a ‘hostage?’ This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a ‘hostage?’
Damari, an Israeli civilian, was shot twice and abducted from her home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. Hamas held her for 471 days. But Abu Toha thinks that she cannot even be considered a hostage because she was a “soldier.”
A similar post by Abu Toha, posted on February 3, 2025, targeted former Israeli hostage Agam Berger:
The Israeli ‘hostage’ Agam Berger, who was released days ago participates in her sister’s graduation from an Israeli Air Force officers’ course. These are the ones the world wants to share sympathy for, killers who join the army and have family in the army! These are the ones whom CNN, BBC and the likes humanize in articles and TV programs and news bulletins.
Hamas held Agam Berger hostage with none of the rights due to a prisoner who has gone through a legal process. But that doesn’t matter to Abu Toha. Because no Israeli could be a hostage in his eyes.
Toha also cast doubt on the forensic evidence that showed that the Bibas children — 9-month-old Kfir and Ariel, 4 — were killed by their captors.
Toha posted February 21, 2025:
Shame on BBC, propaganda machine. IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said ‘forensic findings’, which have not been seen by the BBC, suggested the boys had been killed with ‘bare hands.’ If you haven’t seen any evidence, why did you publish this. Well, that’s what you are, filthy people.
An Israeli forensic analysis found that the two small boys were killed by the murderers’ “bare hands.” Heart-wrenching footage from October 7 showed Shiri Bibas and her two boys being kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Abu Toha’s rush to cleanse Hamas of their brutal murder is tantamount to justifying it.
Antisemitic Slurs
Other posts by Abu Toha constitute a clear violation of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
When Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimeh was arrested by Swiss police in Zurich, Abu Toha blamed “the Zionists,” echoing antisemitic tropes about Jewish control over state bodies, government, and the media.
Another pattern in Abu Toha’s posts is the demonization of Israeli soldiers and symbols. According to Abu Toha, Israeli “terror soldiers” celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah is “what true antisemitism looks like.”
He also thinks that Israeli soldiers’ blood is forfeit when they are off duty — implicitly supporting harming Israeli civilians, most of whom served or still serve as reservists in the IDF due to Israel’s mandatory conscription law.
In another breach of IHRA’s definition, Abu Toha minimized the Holocaust by comparing it to Gaza’s “genocide.”
Abu Toha also seemed to mouth Hamas propaganda and fake news, accusing Israel of having bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip on October 17, 2023. In the initial hours after the blast, mainstream media outlets parroted claims made by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry that Israel bombed the hospital, killing as many as 500 people.
But international authorities quickly concluded that it was the hospital’s parking lot that was hit by a misfired Islamic Jihad missile, resulting in a death toll a fraction of what Hamas had first alleged.
Related Reading: Photographer Who Infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7 Honored in Reuters’ Pulitzer Win
A Blemish on the Pulitzer Prize
The exposure of Abu Toha’s posts prompted HonestReporting executive director Gil Hoffman to call for the prize to be rescinded:
The Pulitzer Prize is the top award in journalism and should not be blemished by bestowing it to a man who repeatedly twisted facts,” Hoffman said. “Abu Toha justifies abducting civilians from their homes, spreads fake news, and calls lighting a Menorah on Hanukkah antisemitism. That doesn’t sound prizeworthy to me.
Hoffman’s words are all the more poignant given that last year, HonestReporting campaigned against giving the Pulitzer Prize to photographers who crossed the border from Gaza with terrorists on October 7 and broke both physical and ethical boundaries.
When Reuters won the prize for international photography, there were no pictures from that day in the winning bid. Reuters later confirmed that images obtained from infiltrators were deliberately excluded so the win would not be marred.
Meanwhile, Israeli Consul General in New York, Ofir Akunis, told Fox News Digital that “these posts are an absolute disgrace, and this man should be condemned for his comments, not given a Pulitzer Prize. Reading these posts should make any decent person absolutely sick to their stomach.”
HonestReporting believes it’s necessary to unequivocally condemn Abu Toha and rescind the prize if the Pulitzer organization wishes to uphold its reputation as a beacon of excellence and ethics in journalism that must not be tarnished.
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