Ex-hostage Damari decries Pulitzer given to Gazan writer who legitimized their abduction
Emily Damari lashes out at prize committee for bestowing honor on Mosab Abu Toha, who called captives ‘killers’ and cast doubt on Bibas children’s murder in social media rants
A former hostage held in Gaza for over 500 days said Thursday she was in “shock and pain” after a Gaza-born writer who appeared to justify her abduction and denigrated other captives on social media was awarded the Pulitzer Prize this week.
Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian currently living in the United States, won the prestigious journalism honor in the “commentary” category Monday for essays published in The New Yorker magazine.
But in social media posts flagged by pro-Israel watchdog Honest Reporting, Abu Toha had written disparagingly of Emily Damari and another female hostage and cast doubt on the brutal murder of the two young Bibas children after they and their mother were abducted by Gazan terrorists. The revelations sparked criticism of the prize committee from Israel’s Foreign Ministry and a call for the prize to be rescinded.
“These are not word games – they are outright denials of documented atrocities,” Damari wrote in a letter to the prize board posted on X Thursday. “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.”
Damari, a 28-year-old civilian with Israeli and British citizenship, was shot and taken from her Kfar Aza home on October 7, 2023. She was released on January 19 this year as part of a ceasefire deal, emerging without two fingers, which had been shot off during the attack.
Posting online days later, Abu Toha falsely portrayed her as a soldier and appeared to attempt to legitimize her being “detai[n]ed” by Hamas.
“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,” he wrote on Facebook on January 25, alongside an old video clip in which she was seen in uniform. “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?’”
On May 6, Abu Toha edited the post slightly, changing “most hostages” to “some hostages.”
In a separate post in early February, he posted a picture of Agam Berger, a surveillance soldier taken captive on October 7 and released as part of the same January deal, calling her and others “killers who join the army and have family in the army!” while criticizing international media for “humaniz[ing]” them.
Honest Reporting also noted that Abu Toha aimed fire at the BBC in February for reporting on Israel’s findings that Ariel and Kfir Bibas, who were respectively 4 years old and nine months old at the time of their abduction, had been murdered by their captors’ bare hands.
“If you haven’t seen any evidence, why did you publish this. Well, that’s what you are, filthy people,” he wrote.
“Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer,” Damari wrote Thursday. “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
There was no immediate comment from Abu Toha.
A spokesperson for the Pulitzer committee told Fox News online that “the selection process for each award is based on a review of submitted works.”
On Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein posted online that the prize for Abu Toha was “shameful.”
“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.
Israel’s consul general in New York, Ofir Akunis, told Fox News that the posts should sicken decent people.
“These posts are an absolute disgrace and this man should be condemned for his comments, not given a Pulitzer Prize,” he said.
In its announcement of the prize Monday, 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.”
Honest Reporting, which charged that other posts by Abu Toha criticized Israel in ways that crossed into antisemitism, called 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,” Honest Reporting executive director Gil Hoffman said in a statement. “Abu Toha justifies abducting civilians from their homes, spreads fake news, and calls lighting a Menorah on Hanukkah antisemitism.”
Israeli terror soldiers celebrate Hanukkah in occupied Gaza, on the ruins of my city. This is what israel is and this is what true antisemitism looks like. pic.twitter.com/2C8oVd66NK
— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) December 25, 2024
According to the watchdog, Abu Toha’s online rhetoric met the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
It pointed out posts in which Abu Toha referred to Israeli troops as “terror soldiers” and compared Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust.
Critics of the IHRA definition, which has been widely, but not universally, adopted in the West, say it is overly broad and stifles legitimate criticism of Israel.
Abu Toha was also accused of echoing Hamas propaganda after he posted last month about the bombing of the al-Ahli hospital in November 2023, which the terror group blamed on Israel, despite evidence produced by the Israel Defense Forces and backed by the US showing that the Gaza City hospital had been hit by an errant rocket fired by the Islamic Jihad terror group.
Remember when Israel denied its responsibility for the bombing of the Ahli/Baptist Hospital in 10/2023?
Today Israel bombed a building and a power plant minutes after it threatened to bomb.
Another piece of breaking news:
Israel warned that it would carry out another air strike.— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) April 12, 2025
A cursory scan of Abu Toha’s recent social media feeds by The Times of Israel also uncovered posts in which he accused Israel of killing hostages held by terror groups in Gaza, disparaged calls for their release, urged the international community to take military action against Israel, and called for activists and others to “escalate” actions against the Jewish state.
On Tuesday, he said online that his account had been suspended from Facebook but swiftly restored, with a Meta spokesperson commenting that the suspension had been a mistake.
Reacting to the Pulitzer win online Monday, Abu Toha posted, “Let it bring hope. Let it be a tale,” quoting the poem of Palestinian author Refaat Alareer, who was killed in December 2023 by an Israeli strike on Gaza.
I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
Let it bring hope
Let it be a tale pic.twitter.com/VP6RsPY6vz— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) May 5, 2025
He went on to list dozens of members of his family who were killed by airstrikes in Gaza, which has been devastated by the war.
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7 when Hamas led over 5,000 terrorists to invade southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Attackers also abducted 251 people who were taken hostage to Gaza. Of those, 59 remain captive in the Strip, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces.
Abu Toha was detained by the IDF in November 2023 and briefly held. His arrest quickly sparked Western media attention, as he had been contributing pieces to The New Yorker and other major outlets since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, painting a dire image of its toll on civilians through personal experience.
The Times of Israel Community.