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🇮🇱 Israel /Culture & Society

Pulitzer Prize awarded to Palestinian photographer who captured ‘starvation in Gaza'

From Jerusalem Post · (5m ago) English Mixed tone

Summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

TLDR

  • A Palestinian photographer, Saher Alghorra, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for photography for his series documenting devastation and starvation in Gaza during the war with Israel.
  • The prize committee cited his haunting images, including one of an emaciated boy and his mother, which became a symbol of the hunger crisis but also drew criticism and a subsequent clarification from The New York Times.
  • Alghorra expressed his heavy heart over the witnessed suffering, stating the images and screams are

The Jerusalem Post, as a prominent Israeli news outlet, reports on the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Palestinian photographer Saher Alghorra for his work in Gaza. While acknowledging the award and the powerful imagery, the report highlights the controversy surrounding one particular photograph of an emaciated boy.

The article notes The New York Times' subsequent alteration of its story, clarifying that the boy suffered from a medical condition affecting muscle development and retracting a quote from his mother. This detail is crucial from an Israeli perspective, as it challenges the narrative that starvation in Gaza is solely a result of the Israeli military campaign. Israeli officials, as mentioned, have consistently blamed Hamas for hindering aid distribution.

for his haunting, sensitive series showing the devastation and starvation in Gaza resulting from the war with Israel.

— Pulitzer Prize committeeDescribing the work of Saher Alghorra for which he won the prize.

Alghorra's own words, expressing the weight of witnessing and documenting the suffering, are included, providing a human element to the conflict's impact. However, the report also points out that other Jewish authors were honored, though not for stories related to Israel, subtly framing the international recognition of Palestinian narratives within a broader context. The Jerusalem Post's coverage, therefore, balances the recognition of Alghorra's work with a critical examination of the context and potential biases in its presentation, reflecting a common approach in Israeli media to engage with international coverage of the conflict.

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. Each image in this series carries the weight of what we have lived through. The images and the screams are engraved in me.

— Saher AlghorraReflecting on his experience documenting the conflict and suffering in Gaza.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Jerusalem Post. Summarized and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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