Palestinian writer wins Pulitzer Prize for Gaza war commentary
Mosab Abu Toha was awarded the $15,000 award for four of his essays published in The New Yorker
Updated 06 May 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: Renowned Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha won the Pulitzer Prize in commentary for his published essays documenting the suffering of people in Gaza.
Abu Toha was awarded the $15,000 award for four of his essays published in The New Yorker “on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel,” the Pulitzer board said.
Announcing his win, Abu Toha wrote on X: “Let it bring hope. Let it be a tale.”
The writer, who was born in a refugee camp in Gaza City, lost 31 family members in an airstrike on their home on Oct. 28, 2023 amid the war in Gaza.
He was detained by Israeli forces in November 2023 while trying to flee his home in northern Gaza, where he lived most of his life and was wounded aged 16 by an Israeli airstrike.
Abu Toha, along with his wife and three children, are now based in the US, where he received a Harvard fellowship for scholars at risk in 2019.
In a tribute post on Tuesday following his Pulitzer prize win, Abu Toha wrote on X: “Blessings to the 31 members of my family who were killed in one airstrike in 2023.
“Blessings to the soul of my great aunt, Fatima, whose ‘corpse’ remains under the rubble of her house since October 2024. Blessings to the graves of my grandparents who I will never find.”
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. (Supplied)
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
While the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East. (Supplied)
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. (Supplied)
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
