The War on Truth Against Israel (Part 1)

Debunking the ‘Mass Starvation’ Allegations

A United Nations commission of inquiry report claimed this week that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The findings featured in the headlines of all the mainstream media. However, as UN Watch said of the report: “It selectively misinterprets statements by Israeli leaders, accepts unverified Hamas casualty figures, disregards Hamas’s systematic use of human shields, relies on unverified media reports (such as by Al Jazeera), and assumes that civilian deaths in Gaza are only the result of deliberate targeting by Israel.”

Meanwhile, another report - in-depth and academic - investigating the war between Hamas and Israel, and specifically focusing on the ubiquitous allegations of ‘genocide’ committed by Israel against the Gazan population, has also been published.

Introducing the report

Inexcusably, the carefully considered analysis was almost completely ignored by mainstream media, eager as they are for more sensational headlines accusing their favourite scapegoat of atrocities. The report comes from an Israeli source, but one that seeks to make every effort to be objective. (It includes a number of strong criticisms of the Jewish state’s war efforts, free speech being alive and well in Israel.) 

Entitled ‘Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Re-examination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025’, the report was compiled by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, a self-declared “independent, non-partisan think tank conducting policy-relevant research on Middle Eastern and global strategic affairs, particularly as they relate to the national security and foreign policy of Israel and regional peace and stability.”

Prophecy Today highlighted the report in its News and Views page shortly after its release, but as the document is over 300 pages long, it was considered appropriate to provide a summary of its contents over the next few weeks. 

Claims of starvation prior to March 2, 2025, were based on erroneous data, circular citations (creating a media “echo chamber”), and a failure to critically review sources.

Unsurprisingly, the report has a significant focus on starvation, as this has been one of the key grounds for the accusations of genocide. This, therefore, is the focus of this first article.  While not entirely uncritical of Israeli actions, the report provides a much clearer picture than the one we get from the media. It states that “Claims of starvation prior to March 2, 2025, were based on erroneous data, circular citations (creating a media “echo chamber”), and a failure to critically review sources.” 

Propagation of erroneous data

One of the key issues has been about false assumptions regarding how much food is needed to adequately sustain the population, assumptions that have then fed into every alarmist headline. Regarding food deliveries, the report notes: “UN agencies and human rights organizations claim that 500 trucks must be provided daily to prevent starvation, citing the fact that, prior to the outbreak of the war, this was indeed the number of trucks arriving each day, 150 of which were loaded with food. However, this claim is patently false. A straightforward review of pre-war OCHA (the UN agency tasked with the transfer of aid and other goods into Gaza) data shows that throughout 2022, an average of only 292 trucks entered Gaza daily, half of which were loaded with construction materials, and of which only 73 were food trucks.” 

Therefore, the assumption by the UN that 500 daily trucks were barely sufficient to feed the population beforehand, and that fewer trucks must automatically result in starvation, led to a false conclusion. 

The UN’s calculations not only failed to recognise that 50% of the trucks entering Gaza pre-war contained cement, but that it was counting how many were entering on each working day pre-war, then comparing it with how many were entering each calendar day once the war started. The report then endeavours to point out that there was no deprivation in this pre-war period, with a higher life expectancy in Gaza than in nearby Jordan and Egypt. Therefore, the assumption by the UN that 500 daily trucks were barely sufficient to feed the population beforehand, and that fewer trucks must automatically result in starvation, led to a false conclusion.  Yet it was one which strongly influenced thinking on this matter, having been thus reported and interpreted further by influential media, such as the BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Amnesty International and CNN, few of which made any corrections; and those that did amend their reports, did so quietly and without fanfare. 

This falsehood is still being propagated, according to the report: “Many Western media outlets continue to cite the figure of 500 daily trucks prior to the war, even today—despite the fact that human rights organizations have quietly withdrawn this claim when confronted with the actual data.”

Assumptions regarding local food production

Another assumption was that the disruption of local agriculture would have had a major impact on food supplies. But the report claims that this did not take into account calorific content, claiming that most domestically produced food in Gaza consists of expensive items such as meat, which was raised on imported animal feed, vegetables and fruit. It states, “local agriculture in Gaza is unlikely to have accounted for more than 12% of caloric intake prior to the war, even before subtracting exports of domestically produced foodstuffs or meat, dairy and eggs produced with imported animal feed at a low conversion efficiency.” 

Agriculture in Gaza prior to the war was very limited, and farmers there had long since stopped producing cereal crops – mainly because, due to the large amount coming in by truck, it was uneconomic to grow them. Only 1,500 hectares of land were cultivated back in 2011, and more may have been lost due to the massive increase in the Gazan population (an increase of 68% between 2005 and 2022). Therefore, any reduction in food production will have had little impact in terms of food supply, even though the reduction in fresh food will have impacted quality of life.

There had been a claim, however, that 44% of Gaza’s local consumption came from local production. Amnesty referred to a publication from Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics from December 2023. Yet a basic check of the source shows that it refers to household expenditure on food products. It entirely ignores the fact that food grants (therefore free and not bought by households) provided 42% of the calories needed by the entire population (it is not equally distributed but aimed at sections of the population).

False reporting

Based on the study’s analysis of available data, a maximum of 82 food trucks were needed to ensure a decent food supply. On average, up until the ceasefire in January 2025, this number was exceeded. After this point, there was a large increase in supplies, enough to feed the entire population for six additional months. UNRWA had claimed that there had been a massive drop in supplies during the May 24 Rafah offensive, but this was in fact false, and UNWRA was forced to correct its figures later that year – the corrections, however, once again, were never reported in the media. 

The report ... concludes that there is indeed a greater (non-violent) mortality rate, but that it does not evidence starvation. Rather, as it is concentrated in older people, it is a sad consequence of the significantly reduced capacities of the medical provision.

The report also looks at the higher level  of mortality than pre-war (other than those killed by fighting or bombs). It concludes that there is indeed a greater (non-violent) mortality rate, but that it does not evidence starvation. Rather, as it is concentrated in older people, it is a sad consequence of the significantly reduced capacities of the medical provision, which is having to focus more on traumatic, war-related injuries, rather than on care of existing chronic conditions.

Stealing of aid

Having made clear that enough aid was being provided, the report goes on to detail the huge problem of the theft of food by Hamas, diverting it from the people. The study quotes hostage Eli Sharabi testifying to the UN Security Council: “But let me tell you, as an eyewitness, I saw what happened to that aid: Hamas stole it. I saw Hamas terrorists carrying boxes with the UN and UNRWA emblems on them into the tunnel. Dozens and dozens of boxes paid by your governments. Feeding terrorists who tortured me and murdered my family. They would eat many meals a day from the UN aid in front of us and we never received any of it.” 

Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas testified to the fact (May 4th 2025) that “Hamas-related gangs are stealing aid.” The report quotes Dr. Michel J.J. Thieren, a veteran humanitarian expert and the special representative of the World Health Organization to Israel, who wrote that “the failures in food distributions [in Gaza] … is not rooted in a policy of aid retention by Israel, but in systematically [sic] looting by armed groups.” Aid organisations “reported their warehouses had been emptied by April 2025, following the suspension of aid in March 2025, despite large stockpiles that should have sufficed to July 2025.”

Where Israel has failed

The study makes clear that Israel is by no means above reproach. Criticism of the government’s approach comes in relation to the halting of food supplies in March 2025. Israel understandably saw the need to ensure that aid reached the civilian population without being seized by Hamas. The change in approach at that time was “not only a militarily legitimate practice but a humanitarian necessity”. However, the report is critical, because it claims “it was wrong to block traditional distribution methods before viable alternatives were established”. Essentially, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation should have been established, and shown to be working well, before aid trucks were suspended, as this caused a significant problem in getting supplies to those who needed them. 

Essentially, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation should have been established, and shown to be working well, before aid trucks were suspended.

No intentional starvation

The report concludes that, “Not only did Israel not intentionally starve Gaza during this period, but it actually facilitated the entry of significantly more food than before the war, even when accounting for the destruction of local production.” 

Clearly, problems of distribution, due to the war, dangers, looting, and seizure by Hamas, have been ongoing factors in the very real difficulties facing Gazan civilians.
But accusations of intentional genocide through starvation are shown to be utterly baseless. 


The report is written by the following scholars:
Prof. Danny Orbach is a military historian from the Department of History and Asian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Jonathan Boxman is an independent scholar and an expert in quantitative analysis
Dr. Yagil Henkin is a military historian at Shalem College and the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security
Adv. Jonathan Braverman is a member of the Israeli bar and IHL lawyer