A United Nations report on northern Gaza failed to confirm earlier warnings of famine in the area, though it said that people were still suffering as a result of the ongoing war — which Hamas launched from Gaza on Israel on October 7.
In May, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which was founded and is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), run by Israel critic Samantha Power, reported that famine was possible in northern Gaza.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee (FRC) published a report on the United Nations website in which it reviewed the FEWS NET warning.
It found:
[Current: 1-30 April 2024] The FRC does not find the FEWS NET analysis plausible given the uncertainty and lack of convergence of the supporting evidence employed in the analysis. Therefore, the FRC is unable to make a determination as to whether or not famine thresholds have been passed during April.
…
[Projection: 1 May – 31 July 2024] As the FRC does not find the FEWS NET analysis plausible for the current period, the FRC is unable to endorse the IPC Phase 5 (Famine) classification for the projection period.
However, this FEWS NET projection is in line with the FRC projection done in March 2024, which has not yet been updated.
The report added a caveat that its findings “does not in any manner change the fact that extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip and does not in any manner change the immediate humanitarian imperative to address this civilian suffering.”
Asked about the report’s findings on Monday, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said: “There is no famine in Gaza.”
He added: “It is true that Hamas do loot the trucks and do sell the aid at vastly increased prices.”
And he noted that the IPC has used the “rhetoric of famine” in the past, which he said Israel had “debunked,” noting that hundreds of aid trucks enter Gaza daily, despite the war.
As Breitbart News noted, Israel has opened up an additional aid corridor in southern Gaza, using a daily pause in fighting during daytime hours.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.