14,000 Dead Babies : About that "Famine" in Gaza

What a fiasco! On May 20th, Tom Fletcher, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, alleged that "There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them." His organization says he mistook a possible danger of starvation in a year for dead babies in 48 hours.

I know. You think that you and I always make innocent little errors like that. Who doesn’t? On the other hand, none of us are the UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. Why is he still in his job if credibility is a thing at the UN?

Fletcher’s fiasco highlights a question of reporting on "mass starvation" in Gaza. As I researched and wrote this piece, the media was filled with what may be important developments. Potentially most significant is the launching of the American sponsored food program and the responses to it. I hope to deal with them at another time.

In this essay, I hope to establish why the phenomenon of which Fletcher is an exemplar deserves condemnation. In short, the preponderance of reliable evidence about food supply in Gaza points to a direction different from much of the reporting I have read.

I begin with an assumption that simply makes sense. It would be strange if civilians in Gaza experienced no food insecurity because Gaza is an active war zone. Therefore, even without further proof, I assume there is some level of food insecurity in Gaza.

According to the World Food Program, "food insecurity" covers a broad span of conditions (from mildest to most serious):

• "no/minimal food insecurity”

• "stressed acute food insecurity”

• ”crisis acute food insecurity”

• "emergency acute food insecurity"

  • In the emergency state of food insecurity, 15-30% of the population is acutely malnourished and people have access to fewer than 2100 calories daily.

Beyond those levels lies what they term "Catastrophe" or “Famine." The accusation of "famine," then, is the most extreme.

We should not make light of the suffering when a population undergoes food insecurity. Among civilians this may be unavoidable during a war, but we must do our best to ameliorate that suffering. However, the evidence suggests that we examine claims pointing specifically to famine, or as it is sometimes called “mass starvation,” with suspicion.

What follows is my breakdown of the evidence:

• The most crucial point is that the World Food Program says: "WFP needs 30,000 tons of food per month to meet the basic needs of around 1.1 million people." Therefore, about 60,000 tons will feed the Gaza population of about 2.2 million for a month.

• According to the IDF's COGAT, the agency tasked with handling civilian affairs, “25,200 aid trucks carrying 447,538 tons” entered Gaza during the last ceasefire which ended on March 18th. COGAT suggests that 77.37% of that was food. Some of those trucks carried non-food relief supplies like medicine, gas, water or tents. The COGAT web site to which I link contains a breakdown by type of cargo.

• To that tonnage we must add an unknown amount of food that existed in Gaza warehouses but had not yet been distributed. The bottom line is that, calculating conservatively based on the WFP numbers, there is enough food in Gaza to last through mid-August 2025.

That reality raises serious questions about the wisdom of Israel's current government in imposing a blockade on food shipments into Gaza, which it lifted under international pressure, when Gaza actually had plenty of food. However, that dysfunction is a discussion for another essay.

The problems of food insecurity in Gaza, then, lie not in the existence of food inside the Gaza Strip, but in two related aspects of the challenge of getting it to the people who need it: distribution and corruption.

Distribution is a challenge recognized in the international aid community anywhere food aid is needed and even more in a war zone:

• Organized distribution through soup kitchens and similar programs requires coordination with the combatant parties, which is not always possible in dynamic combat situations.

• The fact that a distribution center exists does not guarantee its accessibility for the population and does not tell us whether the food is getting to the individuals who need it and who do not show up for whatever reason.

• The way this war has been conducted by both sides, mainly as a series of raids rather than through a clear-and-hold strategy, has made it extremely hard to stabilize supply routes inside Gaza for supply vehicles. Israel seems to be moving to a capture-hold strategy which may make food distribution easier if it succeeds.

• The key question is whether the disorder is on such a level that it prevents effective distribution, thus causing famine, or slows distribution, eventually letting most of the food through to those who need it. I cannot find a clear, direct answer to this question. However, we can look at indirect evidence to estimate if food is getting to individuals in one way or another.

  • The best answer I can find derives from videos and photos of the Gazans that appear in news reports and social media. If we judge by the appearance of the population, which, after all, lives in probably the most photographed war zone on the planet, they do not appear malnourished. These photos are evidence that food is distributed one way or another.

  • When you see the images of people on the street, you often see them photographed to show something unrelated to famine, which makes the pictures a more reliable expression of reality than visual images that may come from suspiciously controlled anti-Israel environments.

  • On the other hand, when you see one of the many widely distributed photos or videos of a group walking down a road, carrying their belongings while they withdraw from an area following an Israeli warning to vacate before a bombing, you see a "random sample" of people who do not look malnourished. Here is evidence that the food is getting through.

• What about heartbreaking pictures of seriously ill children taken in hospitals or announcements that dozens of children have died of malnutrition? I confess, these allegations catch me in a weak spot.

  • These hospitals are necessarily controlled environments and, therefore, subject to a hermeneutic of suspicion.

  • Responding to the merits of allegations that dozens of children have died of malnutrition is beyond my capacity since I have no access to the medical records involved.

  • However, since the existence of food inside Gaza is undeniable, it seems relevant to suggest that Gazan society faces a test in this war regarding its poorest members. Clearly, different levels of society have different resources for coping with food insecurity. The poorest and the weakest, as always, pay the highest price. We must not look away from their suffering.

  • It is hard to see what Israel, conducting a just war against an armed force that invaded it, can do to ameliorate the situation beyond letting aid in. Especially when there is clearly enough food in Gaza to feed the population.

The explanation for the visible lack of malnourishment is probably that there is significant movement of goods via a black market and other legitimate, semi-legitimate, and downright crooked private initiatives untracked by the UN or other aid agencies.

The UN is particularly unreliable. UN numbers obscure the truth about amounts of food, its entry into Gaza, and its distribution. The UN openly states that it only tracks its own trucks and trucks of other agencies integrated into its system, ignoring considerable import traffic. It cannot follow that traffic as it makes its way to consumers.

One point to bear in mind is the rate at which food is stolen, either from trucks bringing it in or from warehouses inside Gaza. In one extreme case last November, 98 of 109 trucks were looted from a convoy. Other cases have been less severe, but it is safe to assume that many food shipments have been looted. Note that looting does not preclude, indeed probably assumes, distribution. Here is where corruption comes into play.

The economic rationale for the looting "business" requires that someone eventually sells the food at inflated prices, which means that the process may drive up prices but not cut the actual distribution of calories to people. Also, looting motivates a thriving "protection" racket, where "guards" are provided for convoys at a cost. The IDF insists that the protection racket, robbery of convoys, and extortionary practices to control marketplaces are a significant component of Hamas’ efforts to raise funds for its operational expenses. The international aid community deals with similar problems whenever a police state confronts a disaster. Why should the Gazan Hamas police state be any different?

To summarize, we know that food exists within Gaza in sufficient quantities to last through the summer. It does not appear from the photographic evidence that there is a famine issue, and there are reasonable grounds to accept that COGAT is correct in its forthright determination that there is no famine in Gaza.

Fletcher and other UN aid officials effectively provide cover for Hamas’ corruption, which is a sinister element in the way the international community has been meeting the challenge of the Gaza War. Supply, over which Israel has significant control, is not the problem that challenges humanitarian efforts in Gaza. Distribution and, even more, Hamas' corruption, are what lie at the heart of the humanitarian challenge in Gaza.