The Pulitzer Prize Board and The New Yorker magazine remained silent last week after HonestReporting demanded the revocation of the prestigious award from a Gazan poet who excused the abduction of Israelis by Hamas.
Their silence was more deafening than expected, given that our exposé prompted a former Hamas hostage to join our call and publicly slam Mosab Abu Toha, who won the prize for his essays published in the magazine about the ongoing war in Gaza.
We also revealed that The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, who happens to be a senior member of the 2024/25 Pulitzer Prize Board, apparently hired Abu Toha “on the first phone call” and gave him a platform to spew Hamas propaganda.
Slammed by Former Hamas 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 considers her to be a “soldier” and therefore cannot even be considered a hostage.
A day after our exposé, Damari hit back at Abu Toha on her Instagram and X platforms, saying:
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.
It’s now been 48 hrs since we revealed Mosab Abu Toha’s posts. And 24 hrs since @EmilyDamari1‘s open appeal to the @PulitzerPrizes Committee. Not a single judge has come out to condemn his words.
Shameful. https://t.co/KoAWxvecQI
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 9, 2025
While her pain was met with silence from those who had honored Mosab, he had no problem appearing on MSNBC and calling her a soldier again:
Co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend: Primetime Catherine Rampell (@crampell) asked Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian author @MosabAbuToha if he “would like to clarify” a Facebook post he wrote months ago about Israeli soldier Emily Damari, who was captured by Palestinian resistance… pic.twitter.com/zRtvgxd7Y7
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 11, 2025
Abu Toha also targeted former Hamas hostage Agam Berger, and spread fake news and antisemitic content (read our full story here).
Related Reading: EXPOSED: New Pulitzer Prize Winner Excused Abduction of Israelis by Hamas
“Hired on the First Phone Call”
Meanwhile, a celebratory Facebook post tagging The New Yorker’s Editor David Remnick, revealed that Abu Toha was hired “on the first phone call:”
Could it be that Remnick skipped the necessary background check — one of the pillars of ethical journalism that he should have safeguarded — because he wanted a Gaza voice for his magazine?
That Remnick has complete faith in Abu Toha can be gleaned from an uncritical interview he conducted in December 2023 on the New Yorker Radio Hour.
Towards the middle of the audio conversation, which centers on Abu Toha’s suffering, and after the listeners’ compassion had been sufficiently evoked to erase any shred of critical thought, Remnick lets Abu Toha minimize the October 7 massacre in southern Israel and Hamas’ role:
David Remnick: Do you think that Sinwar, the head of Hamas, made a terrible mistake by planning and executing what took place on October 7th?
Mosab Abu Toha: What I hear, from the beginning of this is that Hamas’ goal was to execute the Gaza command who were at the border with Gaza. That was the only target for them. Then they just saw that it was an easy task, and then they continued to go more and more into Israel and kill other soldiers and civilians. That’s what I think was their target.
David Remnick: In a sense, you think they succeeded in a dark way beyond their wildest expectations.
Did the editor of The New Yorker really believe that Hamas terrorists just happened to stumble upon an open border fence on October 7 and go on to slaughter 1,200 people? Did he not hear of their detailed battle plan, titled “Jericho Wall?”
Hamas did not “accidentally” end up murdering Israeli civilians — they were always the target.
Anyone who buys into the Hamas propaganda that October 7 was aimed solely at military targets on that dark day should not be a credible journalist, let alone a Pulitzer Prize Board member.
In another example, Remnick interviewed Abu Toha about the al-Ahli hospital blast at the beginning of the war. Abu Toha lies through his teeth, echoing Hamas propaganda that Israel had killed 500 people in the hospital.
Instead of correcting the article and cutting ties with Abu Toha after it’s been clarified beyond doubt that an Islamic Jihad rocket hit the hospital’s parking lot, Reminck lets Abu Toha shill for terrorists on the pages of The New Yorker:
When I asked Mosab what he thought of the denials, he answered, “No one believes them.” He criticized as “unfair” President Biden’s statement suggesting that Israel wasn’t responsible, and added, “Well, what if it were?”
So, with the Pulitzer Board silent, and its senior member Remnick allowing Abu Toha to spread blood libels against Israel, it’s clear why none of them reacted to the painful call of a former Hamas hostage who was publicly attacked by the “journalist” they chose to award.
If they think they can separate the work from the person, they are wrong. Would Hamas terrorists exclusively documenting the atrocities be eligible for a Pulitzer Prize?
How incredibly sad that people who act as professional and ethical models that one can look up to are no longer the gold standard for such awards.
But the Pulitzer Prize Board and The New Yorker either agree with Abu Toha’s abhorrent views or are too ashamed to admit their utter moral and professional bankruptcy.
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