Catherine Rampell
Because this is circulating again: Mr. Abu Toha is a gifted writer who has endured tremendous loss. But with all due respect, he lied extensively in our interview, specifically about his past comments on social media. And those lies have since gone viral because they have been excerpted and shared without context. Here is some of the context. Most of our interview was about his personal story of grief and suffering, and his writings about this topic, which were honored with a Pulitzer. His award was controversial at the time, however, because of some of his social media posts excusing or rationalizing violence on Oct. 7. The controversy surrounding his honor was readily apparent from any basic Google News search about him at the time. Among other things, he said that the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, a recognized terrorist group, were not really “hostages,” and essentially had it coming. For example he mocked one specific hostage by name (Emily Damari), who was abducted from her home on a kibbutz on Oct. 7; shot; and subsequently starved and abused underground for 500 days. (She released an open letter to the Pulitzer Board after Mr. Abu Toha's prize was awarded.) In another post, Mr. Abu Toha criticized the BBC and CNN for “humaniz[ing]” Israeli Jews. I am including screen shots of examples of those posts. Mr. Abu Toha has since deleted these posts, which may tell you something about whether he thinks they were wise to publish. In our interview, I asked Mr. Abu Toha if there was anything he would like to clarify about the Facebook posts he had deleted. He responded by lying about what he had said. “First of all, I did not question her status as a hostage, because she is a hostage,” he replied, adding that he had said only that Palestinians should be treated with compassion. This representation is false. If that anodyne statement had been entirety of his prior Facebook remarks, it indeed might look outrageous that a journalist would ask him about any “controversy.” But that is not the case. Mr. Abu Toha is a poet awarded a prize specifically for his words; some of those words have attracted substantial criticism because they countenanced violence. To not ask about those words and the ongoing storm surrounding them would be a dereliction of our jobs as journalists.
Mosab Abu Toha
I’m seeing this video circulating these day on X. Yes, it never gets old. This is part of the interview I did in May 2025. I traveled to NYC for a pre-taped interview on MSNBC’s Weekend Primetime to discuss my Pulitzer Prize. I arrived ready to speak about my essays, my life in Gaza, and the mounting losses my wife and I had endured. However, the conversation didn’t start there. That was only the second question I was asked. The months following that interview brought even deeper grief. In August 2025, my wife lost her father in an Israeli strike. Just a month later, Israel killed my second cousin along with his wife and their four young children, aged ten, six, four, and two. Between October 2023 and May 2026, my wife and I lost over a hundred relatives. And we are still asked to humanize our murderers. And still, academic institutions and other bodies continue to penalize and condemn us simply for speaking out against these heinous crimes. Shame on you! I will not bend, I will not bow, and I will not break.
