The Pulitzer Prize scandal is deepening after Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha, this year’s Pulitzer winner for commentary, was announced as a keynote speaker at the People’s Conference for Palestine—a gathering featuring convicted terrorists and anti-Israel extremists. Abu Toha, who defended Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, dismissed abducted Israeli civilians as fake victims. On Jan. 24, he wrote, “How on earth is this girl called a hostage?” about 28-year-old UK-Israeli Emily Damari, who was kidnapped from her kibbutz and held for 471 days in Hamas captivity.
The conference, scheduled for Aug. 29–31 in Detroit, boasts a lineup that includes Hussam Shaheen, who served 27 years in prison for attempted murder, and Omar Assaf, a former member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Trump administration is already preparing to deny visas to foreign participants. A State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon, “Given the public invite lists seem to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a ‘look out’ status.”
Despite his Pulitzer honor, Abu Toha has repeatedly smeared Israelis who survived Hamas captivity. In February, he sneered that freed hostage Agam Berger and her family were “killers who join the army.” Survivors themselves condemned his award, with Damari blasting the Pulitzers for elevating “a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered.”
