Jewish author Nathan Thrall, Reuters and New York Times win Pulitzers for controversial reporting on Israel

(JTA) – Pulitzer Prizes were awarded Monday to reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been steeped in controversy since its publication, including a nonfiction book by Jewish author Nathan Thrall and breaking news reporting and photography of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks by Reuters and The New York Times.

The Pulitzer Board too presented a special quote to journalists covering the war from Gazanoting that “an extraordinary number have died” while doing so.

Thrall, a professor at Bard College based in Jerusalem whose work is often highly critical of Israel, won the Pulitzer for general nonfiction for his book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.” The book, published days before October 7, focuses on a Palestinian father’s attempts to find out news about his son after a bus accident; the Pulitzer jury called it “a beautifully reported and intimate account of life under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.” The book also focuses on several Israeli characters whose lives intersect with Salama’s.

Reuters won in the ‘breaking news photography’ category because of the current images of the beginning of the October 7 attacks. Since the news service published the images, it has faced accusations from a pro-Israel media advocacy group that its photography staff had prior knowledge of the attacks. a charge the company has denied.

The Pulitzer jury made no mention of the controversy in its citation, which praised Reuters for “raw and urgent photographs documenting Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel and the first weeks of Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.”

The Times staff won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting a series of reports on Israel’s attacks and retaliation in Gazaincluding work focused on the Israeli military’s intelligence failures and the ways in which its government has supported Hamas for years, as well as its strategy to bomb areas where it had ordered Gaza civilians to flee.

The Pulitzer jury did not cite “Screams without words,” a controversial Times report on rapes allegedly committed by Hamas on October 7, in his comments. The story was published in December was criticized by pro-Palestinian media who questioned the Times’ sources and from survivors and family members who said the newspaper’s characterization of what happened to people they knew was untrue. The criticism led to a high-profile newsroom leak of internal debate about the piece and has also helped fuel some denials that Hamas committed rapes during the attacks.

Although Thrall’s book predates the October 7 attack, his book tour took place in its shadow and was often a magnet for controversy. Some tour stops canceled Thrall’s scheduled talksThey said they would be “insensitive” in the midst of Israel’s war, in a sign of how Israel’s broader arts and cultural landscape has been divided since the attacks. After the book’s publication, a local Jewish federation protested Thrall’s plan to teach a Bard course on whether Israel’s treatment of Palestinians could be considered apartheid.

At least one media outlet also canceled a planned sponsorship by its publisher Thrall himself has turned down a speaking engagement at the University of Arkansas after the school required him, in accordance with state law, to sign a pledge pledging not to boycott Israel. Thrall is currently in Berlin, where he said the Open Society Foundation, funded by progressive Jewish megadonor George Soros, paid to distribute free copies of his book.

Elsewhere in the awards, the Pulitzer Committee honored Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian Jewish dissident, with the commentary prize. Kara-Murza, who has accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, was sentenced last year to 25 years in prison for treason and won the Pulitzer from his cell.

“Here There Are Blueberries,” a play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich that is based on real Nazi photos of Auschwitz acquired by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum, was a finalist in the drama category but did not win. The show premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2022 and is currently playing at the New York Theater Workshop. And in the memoir category, Jewish author Andrew Leland’s “The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight” was also a finalist.

The Pulitzers are overseen by Columbia University’s journalism school, which was the epicenter of a campus-wide pro-Palestinian encampment movement and which canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony earlier on Monday in the wake of the protests. Just days before the awards were announced, the Pulitzer Committee also gave special recognition to student journalists covering the protests on campus.