For years, the UN and international media warned that Gaza was starving.
In 2023, the UN said a quarter of Gaza’s population was facing catastrophic hunger. In 2024, it accused Israel of causing famine. By 2025, UN officials claimed there was “irrefutable evidence of famine in Gaza.”
But a later UN-linked report tells a very different story.
According to the script’s cited survey, acute malnutrition across Gaza ranged from just 0.2% to 0.8%, comparable to or lower than the pre-war rate of 0.8%. The script also notes that those figures were lower than rates in nearby countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and even some Western countries.
That matters because famine has specific thresholds. One benchmark is two starvation-related adult deaths per 10,000 people per day. Based on Gaza’s population, the script notes that would mean roughly 1,450 starvation deaths every week. Instead, over two years, Hamas reported 313 starvation deaths. Horrible, yes. But not famine.
The bigger issue is how the claim traveled. The UN warned of famine. Media outlets repeated it. NGOs amplified it. And Israel was accused of deliberately starving civilians, including children.
But if the data did not support the famine narrative, then the question is unavoidable: why was it pushed so aggressively?
The Gaza famine claim was not just a mistake. It became one of the most damaging accusations against Israel in the war, wrapped in the authority of the UN and repeated before the facts caught up.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
