Pulitzer Prize awarded to Palestinian photographer who captured ‘devastation and starvation in Gaza’ – The Forward

(JTA) — A New York Times photographer working in Gaza was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for images for footage taken through the battle with Israel there.

The prize committee said it was honoring Saher Alghorra “for his haunting, sensitive series showing the devastation and starvation in Gaza resulting from the war with Israel.”

One of Alghorra’s front-page footage, printed in July 2025, confirmed an emaciated boy being cradled by his mom, turning into a logo of the starvation disaster within the territory — and a goal of criticism by these, together with the Israeli authorities, who rejected the declare that Gaza Palestinians have been ravenous due to the Israeli navy marketing campaign.

The New York Times subsequently altered the story to notice that the boy suffered from a medical problem that inhibited muscle improvement and eliminated a quote from his mom saying that he had been wholesome earlier than the battle started on Oct. 7, 2023. But it didn’t again away from the story’s different claims about hunger in Gaza.

The pictures for which Alghorra was acknowledged embody snapshots of Gazans queuing for meals, bringing wounded kids for medical care and marking Ramadan inside bombed buildings. They additionally embody an image of a different emaciated child who became a face of the hunger crisis with out attracting the identical particular criticism.

Israeli officers acknowledged areas with meals shortage in Gaza final 12 months however denied {that a} blockade on help getting into the territory was inflicting a mass disaster, saying as an alternative that Hamas was stopping help from reaching Palestinian civilians. But after President Donald Trump said images from the enclave had convinced him that there was “real starvation,” Israel and the United States labored collectively in an try to enhance help distribution.

Alghorra, 28, didn’t instantly remark on-line on the Pulitzer, however he wrote on Instagram after successful a unique prize final month for a similar set of images, the World Press Photo Award, about what it meant to have his work acknowledged.

“My heart is heavy with what I have witnessed — and what I was compelled to photograph: lives lost, lives shattered, displacement, hunger, total destruction, and relentless suffering,” he wrote. “Each image in this series carries the weight of what we have lived through. The images—and the screams—are engraved in me.”

Palestinian American creator Hala Alyan’s e-book I’ll Tell You When I’m Home: A Memoir, which interweaves Alyan’s story of infertility together with her household’s story of displacement, was a finalist within the memoir and autobiography class.

Several Jewish authors have been honored within the prizes, introduced Monday afternoon, although none for storytelling about Israel. M Gessen won for opinion writing in The New York Times about rising authoritarianism within the United States, whereas Bess Wohl gained within the drama class for “Liberation,” a play in regards to the Nineteen Seventies girls’s liberation motion that includes a prominent Jewish character.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.