For months, Israeli hasbarists have pushed a set of “gotcha” tropes to debunk the existence of famine in Gaza.
Jeremy Konyndyk of Refugees International published the following thread, showing that by doing so, these hasbarists are mostly debunking their own credibility on famine dynamics.
With the official declaration of famine in Gaza this week, Konyndyk wrote the following rebuttals of some of those tropes:
Most of this denialism comes from armchair experts who have never worked on hunger emergencies.
FWIW, I directed USG famine prevention efforts for:
– South Sudan 2013-14
– Yemen 2015-16
– Ethiopia 2016
– Nigeria 2016
Plus a lot of smaller ones.
On to the gotchas…
Gotcha 1: This starving kid is next to a parent who isn’t starving! Clearly a ruse!
Why it’s BS: The nutritional needs of growing children make them far more vulnerable to starvation than adults. They invariably starve earlier.
Good overview here: telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
Gotcha 2: this starving person clearly has a pre-existing condition. Not real starvation!
(This one makes me crazy)
Why it’s BS: People with complicating ailments are always more susceptible to earlier starvation.
This is a SIGN of famine onset, not a rebuttal of it.
Gotcha 3: there is food in the market! Some restaurant is open!
Why it’s BS: Famine isn’t the universal absence of food; it’s when adequate food is out of reach for much of the population. In every famine ever, some people could afford food even while others couldn’t.
…trope 3 cont’d
In Gaza, food prices have spiked massively. That tells you that a) some food must still be present, but b) it is priced wildly far beyond what most people can afford.
Gotcha 4: Plenty of food has gone in! Hamas is just stealing it.
Why it’s BS (1): There is not, in fact, plenty of food. Nothing in March/April, and only a trickle since.
GHF provides a pittance and it’s inaccessible to most, especially the vulnerable.
Why it’s BS (2): Israel has supplied NO credible evidence of substantial Hamas theft of UN or NGO food aid.
In fact, ex US ambassador Jack Lew (hardly an Israel skeptic) writes that the Israelis *never* raised these concerns with him – even privately.
foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/ho…
Gotcha 5: There’s food but the UN refuses to distribute it! (Israel is now importing rightwing influencers to promote this lie)
Why it’s BS: Israel tightly controls every UN truck that moves within Gaza. Their own policies prevent the UN from delivering! apnews.com/article/aid-ga…
Gotcha 6: You’ve been warning of famine since last year – you’re just crying wolf.
Why it’s BS: Each time things spiraled last year, Israel pulled back from the tipping point. (We wrote a whole report on this)
This time, they didn’t pull back. refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs…
…trope 6 cont’d
And by keeping many Gazans teetering back and forth at the edge of famine since spring 2024, Israeli policy has demolished whatever coping mechanisms people had left.
That policy laid the fuse, and the blockade in March/April set it alight.
Gotcha 7: The IPC changed the goalposts! They used a different malnutrition standard for Gaza!
Why it’s BS: This just shows a basic ignorance of famine thresholds.
The last IPC report used a 15% MUAC threshold for famine-level malnutrition – in line with IPC guidance.
MUAC is often used if good weight-for-height data cannot be obtained. The MUAC threshold is lower than WfH because they manifest at different levels within the same pop’n.
This approach has been used by the IPC for years, including in Sudan, Somalia.
(The Free Beacon did a whole piece using this claim to debunk the last IPC analysis – and the entire thing rests on this armchair misreading of IPC guidance)
Bottom line: all of these tropes are classic famine-denial disinfo.
As Alex de Waal wrote here, we see this around most famines, especially as the situation approaches visible collapse.
Don’t fall for it.
