Food insecurity in Gaza is being exaggerated, and few observing the real suffering there blame Hamas.

T he death of a child is a tragedy. The infliction of that death by deliberate starvation is an intolerable crime. And an image of such a starving child is a demand for justice, eliciting deep sympathy from almost everyone who sees such suffering. Outrageously, this compassion is being exploited by Hamas, the press, and United Nations humanitarian agencies for political ends — namely, to pressure Israel into unilaterally ending its war on Hamas.

This is far from the first time that the United Nations has misrepresented a famine, and it is undoubtedly not the last. The New York Times dutifully reported in 1995, “As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization.” A subsequent study by the London School of Economics found UNICEF’s data baseless. Per the Washington Post, “child mortality figures provided to the United Nations were deliberately doctored by Saddam Hussein’s government to discredit the international community.” What the Washington Post failed to note is that the UNICEF report was co-authored by the Saddam Hussein regime.

History is repeating itself. Last month, an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, largely sourced to U.N. agencies and funded in part by the U.S., declared that famine conditions exist in parts of the Gaza Strip. U.N. officials labeled the “famine” a “failure of humanity itself.” Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the U.N. has repeatedly warned of famine in Gaza (November 2023, December 2023, January 2024, March 2024, May 2024, November 2024, May 2025), only for it not to materialize. But this time it’s real, trust them. Really. Even the rabidly pro-Palestinian Turkish media reports 185 “deaths from starvation” in August, a far cry from any standard of conflict-induced famine.

The government of Israel refuted the claims then, and subsequent evidence proved them correct.

This does not mean that Gazans are not suffering. There is evidence of a serious level of food insecurity for many civilians. But Israel and the conflict itself are only partly responsible. Hamas systematically steals aid and prevents civilians from accepting Israeli assistance. In addition, credible reports confirm that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres personally blocked hundreds of aid trucks, ordering them held unless Israel reinstated UNRWA, despite UNICEF and World Food Program (WFP) being capable of moving the humanitarian supplies.

But none of this translates to famine. Famine classification under the IPC requires: at least 20 percent of households experience extreme food shortages; at least 30 percent of children suffer acute malnutrition; and a crude death rate exceeding 2 per 10,000 people per day. For Gaza, those standards were watered down and manipulated to reach a predetermined political outcome.

Consider the current claims. The IPC, using suspect numbers from Hamas, reports 16 child deaths from malnutrition-related causes. Based on IPC thresholds, famine in Gaza City would imply nearly 200 daily deaths from hunger or disease. Hamas’s own, likely exaggerated, figures — around six deaths per day across the entire Strip fall dramatically short of that marker.

Indeed, there is hardly a sentence in the IPC report that cannot be refuted by either direct satellite evidence, photographic data, proper math, or non-U.N. statistics. Claims of famine and widespread food shortages stand against confirmed Israeli deliveries of 100,000 truckloads of humanitarian supplies — food and medicine. COGAT, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, asserts that 4,400 calories per person per day have entered Gaza since the beginning of August. Even half that amount would preclude a famine.

The IPC also insists that Gaza’s “health system has severely deteriorated, compounded by persistent fuel shortages that continue to restrict service delivery.” Israeli authorities note that there are “18 operating hospitals and medical aid centers, as well as 12 field hospitals, that are providing medical services to the civilians in Gaza.” Almost 4,000 Gazans have left the Gaza Strip for medical care facilitated by the Israel Defense Forces.

Traditionally, humanitarian access requires that programs be free of armed actors — on payrolls, on beneficiary lists, or in control of distribution. These are the rules of the road for every conflict, every crisis, every humanitarian operation. For years, Gaza has not met that threshold. Hamas has infiltrated every effort. Once infiltration was detected, programs should have been suspended until integrity could be restored. Continuing operations under these conditions means the humanitarian system has normalized the very violations it exists to prevent.

But at the end of the day, the facts don’t matter. Israel fights a rearguard action against an international system that seems determined to cast Jews as the villain. Nonetheless, for the United States, the largest funder of the United Nations and specialized agencies, the IPC included, there are critical questions that must be answered.

Humanitarian credibility is fragile, built on the principles of access and neutrality. When objective principles and standards are manipulated to serve political objectives, the credibility of the entire system is undermined. UNICEF, WFP, UNRWA, and their partners are doing violence to themselves by politicizing their operations in Gaza. Trust and continued support require them to remain above politics.

For decades, Hamas has stolen food and medicine intended for the people of Gaza and used it to nourish its supporters and to raise funds by selling the remainder to the highest bidders. For years, Hamas has stolen cement and water pipes intended to provide clean water and shelter to the people of Gaza and used them to build hundreds of kilometers of terror tunnels. For years, Hamas has built operational bunkers under schools, hospitals, and mosques. This was known to the United Nations and every European government.

And for decades, the U.N. and humanitarian NGOs have held Israel to a different standard. Humanitarian programs in Gaza have always fallen short of the standards applied everywhere else. Now they are twisting IPC measures to assert famine in Gaza, all for the purpose of the Hamas information war on Israel. The U.N. and international NGOs insist they are not antisemitic — just opposed to actions by Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. But history makes clear that it is only Israel that is held to a different standard. That is the textbook definition of antisemitism.

Danielle Pletka is a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the host, with Marc Thiessen, of the podcast What the Hell Is Going On? and the related Substack. Brett Schaefer is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on the United Nations and international organizations.