An IDF investigation rejected the Gaza famine but experts say it only reaffirmed its existence

The body of a five-year-old child who died of malnutrition on the way to his funeral on 11 August 2025

Nir Hasson writes in Haaretz on13 August 2025:

The Israel Defense Forces issued a statement on Tuesday, which was meant to refute claims made by Hamas in its so-called “Starvation Campaign” blaming Israel for the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip due to malnutrition.  However, experts who analyzed the statement found no evidence to prove that there is no famine in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary.

In the IDF statement, the army is continuing to claim there is no hunger in Gaza, stating that Hamas is making “concerted efforts to amplify the narrative of starvation in the Strip.”

“A thorough investigation conducted by the defense establishment exposes the gaps and provides evidence that Hamas ran a coordinated campaign as part of a broader effort to defame Israel and achieve political gains,” the statement said.

In its statement, the army’s first claim is that the number of reported deaths from hunger spiked inexplicably in July, “coinciding with the negotiations” between Israel and Hamas. According to the IDF, this increase is deliberate, not genuine.

However, hunger experts have long warned of a deadly surge in malnutrition in the Strip following Israel’s starvation policy, which began on March 2, when Israel completely closed all border crossings for food entry for 78 days.

Only at the end of May, following international pressure, food supplies resumed through two channels – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on the one hand, and the UN and other humanitarian organizations on the other.  Still, the IDF imposed numerous restrictions on the organizations and prevented them from delivering significant amounts of food. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was also unable to feed Gaza’s two million residents effectively.

Since March, all aid organizations operating in Gaza have reported a steadily worsening famine. The number of children reported as suffering from severe malnutrition rose from 2 to 9 percent over roughly five months, while food prices in the markets skyrocketed.

On July 20, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry began reporting significant deaths from malnutrition. Up to that point, 86 deaths had been recorded; since then, another 150 have been reported.

The Israeli military claims the sharp increase is suspicious and indicative of the Health Ministry’s unreliability. But this is precisely what experts had predicted: an exponential rise in starvation deaths, several months after the blockade began and food became scarce.

The IDF also cited what it called further evidence of the Health Ministry’s alleged unreliability: the ministry did not publish the names of the deceased. Indeed, no names have appeared on social media, but since the start of the war, the ministry has not released the names of anyone who did not die directly from gunfire or bombings.

Denying well-documented reality
The most substantial evidence issued by the Israel Defense Forces regarding the famine is that the children in Gaza whose cases have been publicized, in fact, suffered from preexisting medical conditions, and the deterioration of their medical state was unrelated to their nutritional status.

The army’s statement, issued in English, details the case of four-year-old Abdullah Hanu Muhammad Abu Zarqa, who had a genetic disease causing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, osteoporosis and bone thinning, and had been receiving medical treatment in Israel before the war.  Another case mentioned by the Israeli military was 27-year-old Karam Khaled Mustafa al-Jamal, who suffered from lifelong muscular dystrophy and partial paralysis.

“Hamas cynically exploits tragic images and misuses them for a false and timed propaganda campaign,” the military wrote in its statement, in a blatant violation of Abu Zarqa’s medical privacy by including his medical records in the post on X, including the statement in English.

Palestinians waiting to receive food at a community kitchen center in Gaza City, earlier this month.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
According to experts, it comes as no surprise that children and adults with preexisting medical conditions are among the first to be affected by hunger in Gaza. While people with genetic and other illnesses also exist in Israel and around the world, they do not appear as visibly ill as patients in Gaza do. This is due to some of the conditions requiring a specific nutritional diet, which has been unavailable in Gaza, or since malnutrition worsens existing illnesses.

As Prof. Roni Strier, former chair of Israel’s National Food Security Council explains, “There may be underlying medical conditions, but when there is starvation, the vulnerable groups are the first to be affected.”

“Take [Israeli cities] Ashdod and Ashkelon, close them off for three months without food, move the entire population back and forth, and you’ll see that after three months, people will start dying,” he told Haaretz.

“The claim that if a child who died of hunger had a ‘preexisting condition,’ his death is therefore unrelated to starvation, has nothing to do with medical logic,” said Aseel Aburass, director of the Occupied Palestinian Territories department at Physicians for Human Rights – Israel.

“Malnutrition weakens the body, exacerbates existing illnesses and leads to faster death,” she said. “This is the classic mechanism of death in times of famine, and the fact that the defense establishment ignores it shows an unwillingness to confront the facts.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel criticized the statement issued by the Israel Defense Forces: “The so-called investigation the army is boasting about notes that in most cases, not all or the majority of them, those who died of malnutrition had severe preexisting medical conditions.”

“Indeed, deaths related to malnutrition can be strongly influenced by a range of social and physical risk factors – preexisting illnesses, pregnancy and childbirth, old age and disability – all of which can be greatly aggravated by hunger, to the point of death,” the association added.

The association also draws a link between the risk of malnutrition and extreme poverty, physical weakness preventing people from seeking food, or being trapped in areas to which access has been cut off by Israel’s army. “These individuals, though part of vulnerable groups, would not have died if they had received even minimal amounts of basic, healthy food. Are their lives worth less than those of healthy individuals?”

In stark contrast to the IDF’s anecdotal reports, all humanitarian organizations operating in the Gaza Strip base their claims of extreme and deadly hunger on countless field reports from residents, doctors, international aid workers and others; on hundreds of thousands of routine assessments of Gaza’s children’s mid-upper arm circumference; on calculations of the food reaching the population; on regular reports from the hospitals and clinics; on the Gaza food price index and more.

Aseel Aburass of Physicians for Human Rights explains: “Hunger and malnutrition are measured using epidemiological tools recognized by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), as well as data from the World Food Program, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.”  “All of these organizations have reached the conclusion that most of Gaza’s population is in a severe or critical state of food insecurity, with large segments of the population crossing the threshold into hunger. The data show rising rates of child mortality and acute malnutrition in recent months, particularly in July, in line with the collapse of supply, health and aid systems,” she added.

Aburass also said that “the claims there are no ‘signs’ of widespread malnutrition directly contradict data from the IPC, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Oxfam and every organization working in Gaza.”

“This is an attempt to deny a reality well-documented by independent professional bodies, including warnings issued as early as 2024. Population findings show high rates of acute malnutrition and thousands of hospitalizations due to malnutrition. These are facts that can’t be dismissed with just one or two photographs,” Aburass continued.

“What Israel needs to do is allow a professional delegation to enter the Gaza Strip and conduct an assessment,” says Prof. Roni Strier. “That’s the only way to confront the political tsunami and moral disgrace we face internationally.”

This article is reproduced in its entirety