Slandering Israel of "Catastrophic Palestinian Starvation"

"The available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring."

"The IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] acute food insecurity analysis conducted in February 2024 projected that famine would likely occur in the northern governorates [of Gaza] by the end of May, based on the assumption that conflict would persist with the same intensity and humanitarian access would remain very low."

"While the use of assumptions and inference is standard practice in IPC generally, the limitations of the available body of evidence and the extent of its convergence for northern Gaza in April leads to a very high level of uncertainty regarding the current food security and nutritional status of the population."

Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report

Bustling street markets filled with produce in the Deir al-Balah camp in central Gaza on June 21, 2024. Photo by Majdi Fathi/TPS-IL

The arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court naming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing both of leveraging the "starvation of civilians as a method of war", levied in May, based its warrants on the warnings issued by the IPC's early reports and those of the UN's World Food Program, both warning that northern Gaza was under a "full-blown famine" in May. Just as the IPC's and UN's warnings were without credibility, so too the ICC's warrants.

Aided and abetted by international media which themselves relied on IPC projections in reporting the conflict, the allegations of war crimes committed by Israel at war with Hamas, gave credence to the public relations campaigns vilifying Israel on behalf of the Hamas propaganda machinery, while selectively bypassing Israel's assurances of efforts during an intense time of conflict, of making every effort to alleviate the food insecurity of ordinary Palestinians.

 

Lorries with aid loads for delivery into Gaza arrive at Larnaca Port, Cyprus, June 26, 2024. REUTERS/Marinos Meletiou

 

While Israel opened corridors with the full knowledge that in so doing, it ran the risk of assisting Hamas leadership and operatives escaping the consequences of the atrocities they committed in southern Israel. In the same token, while Israel was doing its utmost to still international criticism holding Israel to standards never imposed upon other countries forced to defend themselves from gratuitously savage violence, the world looked the other way when evidence arose of Hamas looting humanitarian food and goods convoys meant to sustain Palestinian civilians.

After months of dire warnings of "famine is imminent" in the Gaza Strip, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification released a snapshot report published on June 25. Funded by a number of Western countries such as Canada, the European Union and he United States the new report explains that its revision was occasioned partially from earlier reliance on "assumptions and inference" to "address major gaps in publicly accessible evidence". 

The report's conclusions inspired David Adesnik of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to characterize the IPC's admission of errors as "one of the greatest slanders of the last eight months", obliquely referencing the beginning of conflict in October stemming from the Hamas invasion of Israel and revelations of the terrorist group's inhumane indulgence in sadistic savagery of horrific proportions that included group rape, mutilation and bloody mass slaughter.

A convoy carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza on its way to the Rafah crossing last month as looted. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA

 

"After months of hearing that Israel was blocking the delivery of sufficient aid to Gaza we now see that Israeli authorities facilitated a massive increase in shipments of both aid and commercial goods, alleviating shortages in Gaza while Israeli forces continued to prosecute the war against Hamas."

"This is a decisive rebuke to malicious claims that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war against the people of Gaza."

David Adesnik, senior fellow, director of research, Foundation for Defense of Democracies