Noah Rothman
National Review, July 29, 2025
“… neither the U.N. nor its supporters place any onus on Hamas — the supposed governing authority in Gaza — for its people’s welfare.”
First, there was the “imminent” famine in Gaza of which the United Nations’ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned back in March of last year — a claim that was breathlessly retailed by dozens of media outlets before the IPC belatedly recanted. “The available evidence does not indicate that Famine is currently occurring,” the outfit confessed weeks later, an admission that was received by its once fevered audience with indifference.
Then there was the famine this past May, in which “food-starved” Gazans “resorted to grinding lentils, pasta and rice for baking bread amid severe shortages of flour,” as the Agence-France Presse put it. The allegation that a long-forecast starvation campaign had begun in earnest following the collapse of a short-lived cease-fire between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces was buttressed by the IPC’s claim that roughly 14,000 “babies” would die of nutritional deficiencies within the next 48 hours in the absence of international intervention.
Then came the “clarification”: not “babies” but children, not “death” but possible malnutrition, and not “48 hours” but twelve months, and only if the conditions that prevailed in May persisted in perpetuity. Once again, the correction received a fraction of the attention the original salacious accusation earned.
The U.N.’s ire may not have been genuine, but those who mourn for the state in which the Gazan people find themselves are surely sincere. Today, there is real hardship in Gaza, and food shortages on the Strip have proven more verifiable than they were previously. The United Nations and its allies want you to believe that this unacceptable reality is the fruition of an Israeli strategy — one that has long been alleged but which has now finally arrived in earnest. The reality is more complicated. … [To read the full article, click here.]