Failure and Famine

This summary of the coverage of famine in Gaza provides insight into the cliche that truth is often the first casualty of war. 

Addressing Famine

 UN World Food Programme  urges action now. Children are dying. Act now.

Urgent appeal. Famine is real. Donate and help us reach families on the edge of...

Famine confirmed in Gaza (Famine Is Confirmed in Gaza, n.d.)

UNICEF Canada issues Emergency Appeal and declares the Situation Is Urgent.

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Famine confirmed in Gaza City is 'failure of humanity', (Situation Is Urgent, n.d.)

BBC reports a UN-backed body confirms famine in Gaza Strip and surrounding areas, and says half a million are facing "catastrophic" conditions. The report indicates how Israel's policies created famine in Gaza. (UN-Backed Body Confirms Famine in Gaza, n.d.)

BBC reports Israel has systematically obstructed food entering Gaza, aid agencies say, as a UN-backed body confirms a famine. The famine in Gaza: 'A failure of humanity itself', says UN chief. (Israel Has Systematically Obstructed Food Entering Gaza, n.d.)

UN News on 2025/08 reports more than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths, ...

Gaza City is officially in famine, with hunger spreading. (Half a Million People in Gaza Are Trapped in Famine, Marked by Widespread Starvation, n.d.)

Reuters reports that Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine, and it will likely spread, a global hunger monitor determined on ..UN officially declares famine in Gaza, Netanyahu slams 'lie'. (UN Officially Declares Famine in Gaza, Netanyahu Slams 'Lie'., n.d.)

Le Monde.fr reports the IPC report says 'over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, ... ('Over Half a Million People in the Gaza Strip Are Facing Catastrophic Conditions, n.d.)

Al Jazeera declares two Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza in the past 24 hours, which also saw 71 people killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave, … Famine confirmed for first time in Gaza (Two Palestinians Have Starved to Death in Gaza in the Past 24 Hours, 2025)

World Health Organization (WHO) presents a Statement by Commissioner Lahbib on Gaza famine that more than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths. (Half a Million People in Gaza Are Trapped in Famine, n.d.)

European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations reports famine is no longer a risk in Gaza. It is a reality. Children are dying from hunger and disease, while families are going days without food. UN-backed experts declare famine in and around Gaza City. (Lahbib, n.d.)

The Guardian reports that the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classication)  says famine is 'entirely man-made' and immediate response is needed or avoidable deaths will soar. (Fox, n.d.)

References

Famine is confirmed in Gaza. (n.d.). UN World Food Programme (WFP). Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.wfp.org/news/famine-confirmed-first-time-gaza 

Fox, J. (n.d.). IPC says famine is 'entirely man-made'. Latest news, sport and opinion from the Guardian. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/22/ipc-declares-famine-gaza-city 

half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine. (n.d.). World Health Organization (WHO). Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.who.int/news/item/22-08-2025-famine-confirmed-for-first-time-in-gaza 

half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation. (n.d.). UN News | Global perspective Human stories. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165702 

Israel has systematically obstructed food entering Gaza. (n.d.). BBC Home - Breaking News, World News, US News, Sports, Business, Innovation, Climate, Culture, Travel, Video & Audio. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05ed5rgld3o 

Lahbib, C. (n.d.). Children are dying from hunger and disease. European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO). Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/news-stories/news/statement-com missioner-lahbib-gaza-famine-2025-08-22_en

'over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions. (n.d.). Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/08/22/un-declares-famine-in-gaza_6744612_4.html 

Situation Is Urgent. (n.d.). Donate to Help Children Around the World. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://secure.unicef.ca/ 

two Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza in the past 24 hours. (2025, August 22). Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/23/israeli-attacks-kill-37-in-gaza-as-more-palestinians-die-from-starvation 

UN-backed body confirms famine in Gaza. (n.d.). BBC Home - Breaking News, World News, US News, Sports, Business, Innovation, Climate, Culture, Travel, Video & Audio. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg4p90z1kxo 

UN officially declares famine in Gaza, Netanyahu slams 'lie'. (n.d.). Reuters.com. Retrieved August 22, 2025, from https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-city-officially-famine-with-hunger-spreading-says-global-hunger-monitor-2025-08-22/ 

Numbers Propaganda

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) releases impact reports on the situation in Israel and Gaza every two to three days. It revised its tallies last week to show that approximately 5,000 women and 7,800 children have been killed as of April 30.

OCHA reported deaths in Gaza

Al Jazeera Staff comments that changes in how the UN calculates Gaza’s casualties have been cited as evidence of bias. They aren’t.

Has the UN really said fewer people were killed by Israel in Gaza?

No, is the short answer. (Al Jazeera Staff, n.d.)

The figures for bodies that had been identified were seized on by many media outlets as the UN “revising down” its estimates of the number of women and children Israel had killed in its assault on Gaza.

Rather, the UN was publishing the latest information from Gaza’s MoH about its progress in a massive effort to identify the dead.

The UN confirmed this on Monday, when spokesperson Farhan Haq, responding to a question from Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, said that the updated breakdown was only in reference to the smaller 24,686 death toll.

“There’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those – which of those are children, which of those are women – that will be reestablished once the full identification process is complete,” Haq said at the UN in New York.

Critics often criticise the MoH for being administered by Hamas, implying that its figures are not to be trusted. (Al Jazeera Staff, n.d.)

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated on Tuesday that it has full confidence in the MoH’s numbers.

MoH statistics have also been verified by Human Rights Watch and used by the United States Department of State in past conflicts and as recently as March 2023, despite US President Joe Biden questioning those numbers without evidence.

What is this ‘new number’?

The so-called “new number” of  24,686 refers only to bodies that have been identified – of those, 7,797 were children, 4,959 women and 1,924 were elderly people.

This means that more than 10,000 recovered bodies are still unidentified. (Al Jazeera Staff, n.d.)

During an appearance on the Call Me Back podcast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to reference the change, saying the Israeli army had “been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed … [to] a ratio of about one to one”.

“Fourteen thousand have been killed, combatants,” he continued, “and probably around 16,000 civilians have been killed.” (Al Jazeera Staff, n.d.)

Nick Logan of CBC News reports that women, children still account for more than half of identified victims after UN agency revises figures.

The overall number of Palestinians killed hasn't changed, but from the end of March until last week, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported the deaths of at least 9,500 women and 14,500 children.

Its Friday update said that as of May 9, there were 34,904 reported fatalities in Gaza since Oct. 7, the day Hamas-led militants attacked Israel. Soon after, the Israeli military began bombarding the territory with airstrikes. It launched a ground operation in the weeks that followed.

That number, OCHA stated, does not include about 10,000 people reported missing or believed to be buried in the rubble of the more than 370,000 homes that Israeli bombs have damaged or destroyed in the past seven months.

The breakdown of the casualties, however, only includes 24,686 identified fatalities as of April 30. 

From that figure, OCHA has recorded 10,006 were Palestinian men, accounting for 40 per cent of the identified fatalities, while 4,959 (20 per cent) were women and 7,797 were children (32 per cent). It also listed 1,924 elderly people among the fatalities, but did not differentiate them by gender. (Logan, n.d.)

OCHA also lists the number of reported fatalities in the Oct. 7 attack — figures that come from Israeli authorities and that have also fluctuated since the immediate aftermath — as well as the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza.

In its most recent report, OCHA said there were approximately 1,200 fatalities in Israel on Oct. 7. That includes civilians, foreign nationals and hundreds of Israeli soldiers and security forces. Of those, 1,162 have been identified, including at least 33 children.

In the agency's earliest reports following the attacks, the initial number of OCHA-reported Israeli deaths, based on government data, was at least 1,400. (Logan, n.d.)

Numbers cited without details are another example of the First Causality in war phenomena. Knowing the origin of the numbers and the detailed breakdown of changes in reports help clarify the confidence we can attach to the data.

References

Al Jazeera Staff. (n.d.). Did the UN really say Israel has killed fewer people in Gaza? Al Jazeera. Retrieved May 15, 2024, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/has-the-un-really-said-fewer-people-were-killed-by-israel-in-gaza? 

Logan, N. (n.d.). Why the UN changed its death tolls of Palestinian women and children killed in Gaza. CBC News. Retrieved May 15, 2024, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-women-children-death-toll-1.7203167 

Rafah Incursion Risks Allied Support

A leaders article in the Economist asserts that to accuse Israel of genocide requires that Israel is killing people in Gaza simply for being Palestinian. As Melanie Lidman reported for AP News on May 5, 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he remains committed to an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite widespread international opposition because of the more than 1 million civilians huddled there.

Women mourn near the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Rafah. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

“I say to the leaders of the world: No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself,” he said, speaking in English. “Never again is now.” (Lidman, n.d.)

Yom Hashoah, the day Israel observes as a memorial for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Holocaust, is one of the most solemn dates on the country’s calendar. The ceremony ushered in Israel’s first Holocaust remembrance day since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war, imbuing the already somber day with additional meaning.

Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in the attack, making it the deadliest violence against Jews since the Holocaust.

On Sunday, Netanyahu attacked those accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians, claiming that Israel was doing everything possible to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

Mouhamad Rachini  with CBC Radio reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would carry out a ground incursion of Rafah, with or without a hostage deal. The U.S. government, which provides military and diplomatic support to Israel, has said it opposes a military offensive in Rafah without a humanitarian plan.

Nyka Alexander, a communications officer with the UN's World Health Organization, has been in Rafah for two weeks. She spoke to Tom Galloway, CBC the Current, about what Palestinians are facing in Rafah and the state of health care in the city. Galloway asked for a sense as to how people in Rafah are feeling right now, given the idea of this escalation of a ground incursion hanging over their heads.

They're surrounded by garbage. They're surrounded by dirty water. They're surrounded by, essentially, open air toilets. And they're just tired and scared and don't want the next bad thing to happen on top of the other bad things that have already happened to them and their families.

Imagine all the sidewalks covered in tents and in these makeshift shelters. Imagine the streets flowing with greeny, bluey, black water that is feces mixed with garbage. Imagine there's no garbage cans, there's no garbage collection. There's just piles of garbage. 

People have tried their best. You can see that they've set aside areas where that community wants to put their garbage. But there's not a lot of organized garbage collection.

The flies are everywhere as well, and they're very aggressive. They want to go in your eyes, they want to go in your mouth. From a public health point of view, it's a really disastrous situation. (Rachini, 2024)

The Economist article raises questions of war crimes that may be committed by Israel in areas of discrimination between civilians and combatants and the proportionate use of force.

Those appalled by the suffering in Gaza may argue that genocide was the only charge that could be brought, because the ICJ has no jurisdiction over other war crimes. Yet the focus on an implausible crime diverts attention from the possibility that Israel is breaching the laws of war. These require Israel to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to minimise civilian casualties by being proportionate in the use of force.

The death toll of women and children raises grave doubts over whether Israel is meeting these obligations. It may also be failing to meet its duty under the Geneva Convention to provide medicine and food to civilians in the areas it occupies. As Gaza nears famine, its people do not need grandstanding, they need food. Israel’s leaders need to realise that if they block supplies, they will be held accountable by the court of public opinion—the only court available. (Charging Israel With Genocide Makes a Mockery of the ICJ, 2024)

The motives and actions of Israel are being assessed daily by student protests in the United States and in other western allies. The court of public opinion may decide, in a US election year, that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects international pressure to halt the war in Gaza, he may live with his words: “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.” (Lidman, n.d.)

References

Charging Israel with genocide makes a mockery of the ICJ. (2024, January 18). The Economist. Retrieved May 6, 2024, from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/18/charging-israel-with-genocide-makes-a-mockery-of-the-icj 

Lidman, M. (n.d.). Netanyahu uses Holocaust ceremony to brush off international pressure against Gaza offensive. AP News. Retrieved May 6, 2024, from https://apnews.com/article/israel-holocaust-gaza-war-hamas-netanyahua 

Rachini, M. (2024, May 3). Under threat of military incursion, Palestinians in Rafah face feces-infested waters, illness: WHO official. CBC. Retrieved May 6, 2024, from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/q-a-rafah-health-care-1.7193380