The Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 accelerated one of many dispiriting trends in American public life: the transformation of major institutions from merely biased to something approaching evil.
The latest example is the vaunted Pulitzer Prizes. Pulitzer had long ago become a political rather than journalistic institution, and perhaps it always was—though it was better at hiding it at some point in the past. But while rewarding material for its political utility to the ideological project of progressivism might be annoying—rewarding quality would be much preferred—it is not evil.
What is evil is awarding the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary to Mosab Abu Toha, a deranged propagandist who denies that Israelis could be hostages at all (because of Israel’s universal conscription) and therefore justifies Hamas’s brutal crimes. Toha also perpetuates debunked falsehoods about Israeli “attacks” that never happened, assails Jewish holidays, and engages in Holocaust inversion. His accusations are evil, and rewarding him for them is evil.
Emily Damari, an Israeli hostage freed during the last cease-fire, said it better than anyone could in a social media post, which John Podhoretz also read aloud on today’s podcast:
“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 into Gaza. I was one of 251 men, women, children, and elderly people kidnapped that day from their beds, their homes, and a music festival.
“For almost 500 days I lived in terror. I was starved, abused, and treated like I was less than human. I watched friends suffer. I watched hope dim. And even now, after returning home, I carry that darkness with me — because my best friends, Gali and Ziv Berman are still being held in the Hamas terror tunnels.
“So imagine my shock and pain when I saw that you awarded a Pulitzer Prize to Mosab Abu Toha.
“This is a man who, in January, questioned the very fact of my captivity. He posted about me on Facebook and asked, ‘How on earth is this girl called a hostage?’ He has denied the murder of the Bibas family. He has questioned whether Agam Berger was truly a hostage. These are not word games – they are outright denials of documented atrocities.
“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.
“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.
“This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it.”
Toha’s Pulitzer is reminiscent of some of the more egregious Nobel Peace Prize recipients, including but not limited to Yasser Arafat. When institutions honor those who promote the genocidal hatred of the Jews, they seed more of it. But a key difference between Arafat’s Nobel and Toha’s Pulitzer is that Arafat was given the award for signing a peace deal.
It’s true that Arafat had no intention of upholding that deal, and that he used his increased esteem as cover to ramp up his murderous war on the Jews. But a case can be made that giving a peace award to a bad man for at least going through the motions of conflict resolution is an attempt, if a feeble one, at incentivizing better behavior by monstrous criminals.
What the Pulitzer board has done here, by contrast, is reward some of the behavior that Arafat was ostensibly being coaxed away from. Toha is demonstrably dishonest, in addition to spreading vile Jew-hatred and incitement to violence. There is no justification, not even a weak one, for what Pulitzer has done. May shame torment its judges in perpetuity.
