Haaretz journalist Nir Hasson argues in an analysis published yesterday that the Netanyahu government is lying about the famine determination issued last week by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) not to hide starvation in Gaza from the outside world—Israeli pronouncements about the food situation in Gaza have long ago lost their credibility—but rather to hide it from Israelis.
“It’s hard to believe the global community will be convinced,” by the Israeli campaign against the IPC report, Hasson writes, “but that was never the goal. The real purpose is to hide the truth from the Israeli public—the truth about what is being done in its name. That reality is already evident in virtual visits to Gaza’s clinics, such as those featured in a Haaretz weekend article that coincided with the report’s publication.”
Hasson includes a detailed explanation of how the IPC actually works, and finds that it probably understates the severity of the situations that it evaluates. “They are very cautious,” said Professor Alex de Waal, a global hunger expert, in an interview with Haaretz recently. “If you can’t get that data, or if that data is being suppressed, there will be no famine declaration—even if the famine is severe. You may only realize it afterward, when you come back and count the children’s graves.”
Deaths from hunger—this morning the Gaza health ministry in a statement today put the toll from famine and malnutrition at 300—is not the only indicator that the IPC relies on. “Mass hunger is not only a medical issue caused by food shortage,” Hasson writes. “It is a total collapse of the systems that sustain life. Elderly people and infants die because their immune systems are weakened. They suffer infections from living in tents without sewage or clean water. Chronically ill patients die because they cannot access treatment or special food, or are too weak to travel to clinics. Premature births and pregnancy complications are rising. And this is only a partial list.”
