In the Media

On Monday, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. But as usual, it was another bogus report relying on information from Hamas. One of its members, Sara Brown, even said that it ignored its standard practice of holding a debate and simply pushed through the resolution instead.

This should come as no surprise after the UN-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared earlier that there was famine in Gaza. Consequently, newspapers screamed of the “humanitarian disaster” gripping Gaza.

There’s only one problem. Like the genocide report, it isn’t true.

Because what the IPC did was not an act of science, but of politics — a deliberate manipulation of data and a malicious redefining of its own standards in order to brand Gaza with the word famine. Put simply, the situation didn’t meet the criteria. So it changed the criteria. It didn’t find famine — it forged one.

By the IPC’s own definition, famine requires three conditions:

1. More than 20% of households facing extreme food gaps.
2. More than 30% of children suffering acute malnutrition.
3. Two starvation-related deaths per 10,000 people, per day.

That is the threshold used in South Sudan, Sudan, and Somalia. Even Yemen, despite catastrophic hunger there, has never been declared in famine because it didn’t cross that line. Gaza meets none of those criteria, even according to the IPC, using Hamas figures. Yet, suddenly, the bar was lowered — using a ‘special additional protocol’ rarely, if ever, invoked in previous famine declarations.

This isn’t the first time the IPC has sounded warnings. It projected imminent famine in Gaza three times before — in May, June, and November 2024 — only to quietly walk it back. Now, in August 2025, it finally got its headline, not via new evidence, but by rewriting the rules.

The IPC’s findings rest on partial, unreliable sources — most tied to Hamas — while ignoring the vast humanitarian efforts made by Israel and international partners. Since Hamas launched its war on October 7, 2023, Israeli authorities have facilitated more than 100,000 trucks that have carried nearly two million tonnes of aid into Gaza. That’s about a ton for every man, woman, and child. As of recent weeks, experts counting the amount of food entering Gaza say more than enough has been sent to feed every single Gazan adequately – if it isn’t stolen by armed gangs first.

None of that counts, apparently. What counts are Hamas’ talking points.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General António Guterres thundered that this was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment and a failure of humanity.” The UN’s top humanitarian officer, Tom Fletcher, called it “irrefutable testimony”.

But here are some inconvenient reminders: No UN resolution has ever explicitly condemned Hamas for the October 7 massacre. And Fletcher himself once claimed 14,000 babies would die within 48 hours — a grotesque falsehood he was eventually forced to walk back. These are the arbiters of “irrefutable testimony”? Their own record is already refutable.

And in all their moral outrage, one word is conspicuously absent: Hamas – the terror group responsible for every ounce of Gaza’s suffering.

It seems surreal that the words of a death-cult terror group are treated as fact, while the statements of a democracy like Israel are dismissed. But this pattern is familiar. On October 17, 2023, Hamas claimed Israel bombed the Al-Ahli hospital, killing 500. Within minutes, the story spread worldwide. It was a lie. A misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad had struck the carpark, not the hospital itself – killing dozens, not hundreds. By the time the truth emerged, Israel had already been condemned.

Even Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned the media, after being praised by Hamas for his “courage” in his planned recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state, that “Hamas will engage in propaganda.”  Wise words, so it begs the question: why has he echoed Hamas’ talking points in his repeated criticisms of Israel since the war began?

Yes, there is hardship in Gaza — sometimes severe. But to blame Israel is to ignore reality. Hamas began this war. Hamas steals the aid. The UN own figures show 90% of aid trucks are looted.

Hamas starves its own people to manufacture global outrage. The only people being deliberately starved are the Israeli hostages, wasting away in Hamas’ tunnels, denied food, denied water, denied hope.

So why do the UN, the international media, and Western leaders keep changing definitions, staging images, and inflating numbers?

The IPC wants its report to be taken seriously, but it is not a serious report. It is tainted with lies, bias, and outright fabrications. And as if this isn’t enough, one of the authors of the report, Andy Seal, was already accusing Israel of genocide in October 2023, and expressing tacit support for Hamas. In response to a video of Hamas official Ghazi Hamad saying they’ll repeat the October 7 massacre until Israel is annihilated, Seal defended Hamas, writing: “One side is committing genocide and the other isn’t… do you really expect an oppressed people to stop fighting? Let’s be real.”

So let’s be real indeed, for at the moment we are living in an Orwellian nightmare — our own modern 1984. A world where lies aren’t just told, they are rewarded. Where famine is declared where there is none. And where the real famine is the famine of truth.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).