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Freed Israeli Hostage Calls on Pulitzer Board to Revoke Prize to Palestinian Writer Who Justified Hamas Abductions
Former hostage Emily Damari is reunited with her mother, on Jan. 19, 2025. Credit: Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit.
The Pulitzer Prize board is facing increasing pressure to rescind its decision to give the high-profile journalism award earlier this week to a Palestinian writer who justified the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, shared antisemitic comments, and dismissed the accounts of hostages held in Gaza who said they were abused in captivity.
Emily Damari, a former hostage held in Gaza for over 500 days, sent a letter to the Pulitzer Prize board on Thursday urging it to rescind its latest award, expressing “shock and pain” upon learning that the prestigious honor had been given to a man who, earlier this year, questioned her captivity and denied the murder of the Bibas family.
“These are not word games – they are outright denials of documented atrocities,” Damari wrote in a post on X. “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.”
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
Damari, a 28-year-old Israeli-British national, was shot and abducted from her home in Kfar Aza during Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, during which Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people. She was held in captivity for months before being released earlier this year as part of a ceasefire deal. After being shot in the hand and leg, she required surgery and ultimately lost two fingers.
On Monday, Mosab Abu Toha, a Gaza-born writer currently living in the United States, won journalism’s most prestigious honor in the “commentary” category for a series of essays in The New Yorker about life in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.
In a statement announcing this year’s awards, the Pulitzer 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.”
Damari, who was one of 251 hostages kidnapped in southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during the Oct. 7 onslaught, described the writer in different terms.
“Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer,” Damari wrote in her letter. “He is the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And by honoring him, you have joined him in the shadows of denial.”
She continued, “This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed.”
HonestReporting, a media watchdog group, also called for the Pulitzer Prize to be rescinded after it highlighted several posts in which Abu Toha denigrated Damari and other hostages, denied the murder of the Bibas children, and spread fake news and antisemitic remarks across social media.
“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 [sic] on 10/7,” Abu Toha wrote in a post on Facebook earlier this year.
“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’?” he continued.
In other social media posts, Abu Toha referred to Israeli soldiers as “killers who join the army and have family in the army,” while criticizing international media for “humaniz[ing]” them.
According to HonestReporting, the Palestinian writer’s online rhetoric fits the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, spreading misinformation and perpetuating harmful antisemitic stereotypes. The organization highlighted posts in which Abu Toha referred to Israeli troops as “terror soldiers” and likened Israel’s military actions in Gaza to the Holocaust.
On Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein condemned the prize awarded to Abu Toha as “shameful” and called for it to be rescinded.
“Apparently, attacking young Israeli women who were brutally kidnapped by Hamas, can get you the @PulitzerPrizes— at least when it comes to @MosabAbuToha,” he wrote in a post on X.
Apparently, attacking young Israeli women who were brutally kidnapped by Hamas, can get you the @PulitzerPrizes — at least when it comes to @MosabAbuToha.
Shameful. pic.twitter.com/o0e1kvO93B— Oren Marmorstein (@OrenMarmorstein) May 7, 2025
The post Freed Israeli Hostage Calls on Pulitzer Board to Revoke Prize to Palestinian Writer Who Justified Hamas Abductions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.