The Pulitzer Prize, long seen as the gold standard of journalistic integrity, was named for Joseph Pulitzer, a Jewish immigrant who believed in the power of the press to shape democracy, expose injustice, and defend the vulnerable. He knew the truth was not always convenient—but that it mattered. “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together,” he wrote.
This week, that same prize was awarded to Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet and writer whose public words mock the very essence of truth. He has questioned the reality of Israeli hostages. He has dismissed as fantasy the captivity of Jewish children. He has denied the murders of entire families—murders that were live-streamed, verified, and seared into global memory.
Let me say it plainly: this is a moral failure. It is a betrayal—not only of the hostages still underground in Gaza, but of the very spirit Joseph Pulitzer hoped to enshrine.
I want you to hear the voice of Emily Damari. She was held hostage by Hamas for nearly 500 days. Shot. Dragged. Starved. Abused. She watched her friends suffer and still carries the weight of that darkness. Her best friends, Gali and Ziv Berman, remain captives in Gaza. When she learned that the Pulitzer Board had honored a man who denied her existence as a hostage, she wrote:
“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.”
That is not hyperbole. It is truth written in blood.
This is not a question of politics or even of Israel. It is about journalism—about whether we still believe in facts. Whether we still believe that bearing false witness is a sin, not a style. That denial of atrocity is not art, and erasure of victims is not perspective.
Mosab Abu Toha is not an apolitical poet. He is a man who publicly questioned whether a 19-year-old girl who was dragged from her kibbutz at gunpoint, held in Gaza for over a year, and released in a negotiated hostage deal was really a hostage. He wondered aloud how “this girl” could be called a captive. This was not years ago. This was in January. After months of her captivity had been internationally confirmed.
Would we have given a prize to a writer who questioned whether the children of Sandy Hook ever existed? Who wondered whether the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram had really been taken?
Joseph Pulitzer believed journalism should serve democracy and truth. What, exactly, is served by honoring someone who denies the existence of a Jew in captivity?
And let us not ignore the eerie echo of history here. It was not long ago that Jews were told they had imagined their pain. That the scars on their bodies were exaggerations. That their children’s names were not worth remembering.
Denial is not a new weapon. It is one of the oldest.
And now it’s being dressed up as literary merit.
The Pulitzer Board might imagine that it is rewarding artistic courage. But what it has done, instead, is confuse eloquence with ethics. It has made no distinction between poetry and propaganda. Between trauma and performance.
The timing could not be more shameful. It has been over 215 days since 132 people—hostages—were dragged into Gaza. Many of them are believed to be alive. Including children. Including elderly. Including the mentally ill. There is no excuse for denying their reality.
But somehow, that’s what the Pulitzer Board has chosen to reward.
What happens to a society when it cannot agree on something as basic as who is suffering? What kind of future can we build if truth becomes partisan?
To those who claim this is about “narrative,” I offer you Torah.
When our tradition tells the story of Egypt and Exodus, it begins with a scream. Va’yiz’aku. The Israelites cried out. Before there were miracles, before there was redemption, there was simply this: the acknowledgment that their pain was real.
Truth is the beginning of all justice.
We teach our children never to look away when someone is suffering. We teach them that silence in the face of cruelty is complicity. And we teach them that words are never just words. Words build worlds—or burn them.
So what will we build now?
To Emily Damari, I say: I see you. I believe you. And your words, unlike those that earned a Pulitzer this year, are the ones I will teach. Not because they are poetic. But because they are true.
And to the Pulitzer Board: you must know that this was a choice. It was not neutral. And it will not be forgotten.
There is still time to remember what this prize was meant to stand for. There is still time to listen to the hostages. To hear their cries. To believe them.
Joseph Pulitzer, a Jew who knew the danger of propaganda, believed the press could be a light in dark times.
This week, that light dimmed.
It is up to us to reignite it.