Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha Wins Pulitzer Prize For Commentary (image-instagram/mosab_abutoha)
Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha has won the prestigious Pulitzer award for commentary on Monday. The 32-year-old, who has been targeted by pro-Israel groups in the United States for deportation, won the award for his essays published in The New Yorker “on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience” of the war.
Sharing the message on social media, Abu Toha wrote on X, “I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.”As a tribute to the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza in December 2023 and whose final poem was titled ‘If I must die, let it be a tale’, Toha added in their social media post, “let it bring hope. Let it be a Tale.
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Abu Toha was detained by the Israeli forces in Gaza in 2023 before being released to Egypt, from where he had moved to the US. In recent months, the right-wing groups in the US had been actively advocating for his deportation, especially during a campaign of Donald Trump, who has been constantly cracking down on the non-citizens critical of Israel.
Abu Toha, in his writing, expressed his agony for his family members in the devastated territory of Gaza. He had recalled seeing the pictures of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where he regularly visited his grandparents and attended school.
“In the past year, I have lost many of the tangible parts of my memories – the people and places and things that helped me remember,” Abu Toha wrote in one of his New Yorker essays.
“I have struggled to create good memories. In Gaza, every destroyed house becomes a kind of album, filled not with photos but with real people, the dead pressed between its pages,” he added.
The author had also cancelled all events at universities in recent months, citing fear for his safety.
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Meanwhile, in other Pulitzer categories, The New York Times had won prizes for explanatory reporting, local reporting, international coverage, and breaking news photography on Monday.
