Palestinian poet wins Pulitzer for reporting on Gaza conflict
A Palestinian poet and essayist is one of the Pulitzer prize winners for 2025, due to a number of articles he produced about Israel’s military campaign on Gaza for the New Yorker, Middle East Eye reported on May 6th.
Mosab Abu Toha announced his award in an X post. He said: “I’m honored to receive the Pulitzer Prize today. Great thanks to the prize’s jury and board members for honoring me.”
He added in his post: “Let it bring hope / Let it be a tale.” Toha attributed the honour to relatives killed by Israel and other Palestinians lost during the 18-month assault and blockade on Gaza.
His essays illustrated Gaza’s “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,” stated the Pulitzer board, The Guardian reported on May 5th.
The poet has mostly lived in Gaza and was in the besieged area when Hamas and Palestinian fighters attacked south Israel during October 2023.
Abu Toha fled the region with his family in November 2023, but Israeli forces detained him before his departure. They transferred him to a detention facility in the Negev desert, where they subjected him to beatings and interrogation.
Following the abuse, they admitted him to a hospital to treat the injuries he had sustained. Israel later released him to Egypt with his family after pressure from friends in US media and cultural circles.
Israeli forces have targeted Toha, along with many other journalists. On April 2nd, a study from Brown University revealed that over 232 journalists have died while documenting the armed conflict, Al Jazeera reported on April 2nd.
The New Yorker also earned two additional awards for its coverage and analysis of the Middle East.
Middle East Eye, The Guardian, Al Jazeera
