The 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and poet, is set to participate in an imminent anti-Israel conference.
This event is anticipated to feature several radical speakers with known connections to terrorist organizations. Abu Toha, who has publicly defended the October 7 atrocities and belittled Israelis abducted by Hamas, is expected to address the Peoples Conference for Palestine, taking place in Detroit from August 29 to 31.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, other speakers include Hussam Shaheen, a man who served 27 years in prison for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder before his release in February as part of a hostage swap deal. Omar Assaf, a former member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Lama Ghosheh, a Palestinian journalist from East Jerusalem, are also on the roster.
Assaf spent eight years in prison for his association with the DFLP, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Ghosheh was sentenced to three years in prison in 2023 by an Israeli court for inciting violence and glorifying terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza.
The Trump administration has taken note of the speaker list and is preparing to deny visas to "terrorist sympathizers" who apply to speak at the conference, a senior State Department official informed the 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 for visa applications," the senior official stated.
Abu Toha, who has consistently defended Hamas, was awarded the Pulitzer for his essays in the New Yorker. His work documented the "physical and emotional carnage in Gaza" in a manner that combined "deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel."
However, his extremist anti-Israel social media posts came to light shortly after his award.
Abu Toha questioned the labeling of Emily Damari, a 28-year-old UK-Israeli soldier detained by Hamas on October 7, as a 'hostage.' "This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a hostage,'" he wrote on Facebook.
Damari, who was held captive by Hamas for 471 days, criticized the Pulitzer Board for awarding Abu Toha, accusing them of promoting "a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered."
Abu Toha, currently a "visiting scholar" at Syracuse University and formerly a "visiting poet" and "librarian in residence" at Harvard University, also targeted Agam Berger, an Israeli violinist and former Gaza border scout who spent 482 days in Hamas captivity. He criticized the media for humanizing "killers who join the army and have family in the army."
Eliana Johnson, Free Beacon editor in chief and a jury member for a different Pulitzer Prize category, raised concerns about Abu Tohas rhetoric with the awarding organization. In response, the Pulitzer board accused Johnson of violating a confidentiality agreement rather than addressing whether it was aware of Abu Toha's social media activity.
The Peoples Conference for Palestine, now in its second year, is expecting over 3,000 attendees who will "prepare for the next phase of struggle," as stated by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a conference sponsor. Other sponsors include National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Al-Awda: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and the American-Arab Discrimination Committee.
Several U.S.-based speakers with deep ties to the global anti-Israel movement and protests on American college campuses are scheduled to participate. Among them is Hatem Bazian, a University of California, Berkeley, professor and a prominent figure in the SJP movement.
Linda Sarsour, a notorious anti-Semite who has equated Zionism to "white supremacy in America" and publicly supported terrorism, will also deliver remarks. Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian native and Algerian national anti-Israel campus activist, is also expected to speak. Khalil's leadership role in the protests at Columbia led to his detention by the Trump administration until a federal judge ordered his release in June of this year.
The Peoples Conference for Palestine, with its roster of speakers with known terrorist sympathies, raises serious questions about the promotion of anti-Israel sentiment and the potential for inciting violence. The Trump administration's response, while controversial, underscores the importance of vigilance in the face of potential threats to national security.
The Pulitzer board's decision to award Abu Toha, despite his extremist views, also raises questions about the standards and values upheld by such prestigious institutions.
Login