Israel’s Side of the Story

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.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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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.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.