#WTH Gaza lies: famine? death tolls?

Are there no consequences for lying to America & the world?

“Today, food security experts made the assessment that Famine is imminent in northern Gaza. The U.S. will continue to do everything we can to get food to people in Gaza but Israel must do more to put an end to this mass – and preventable – suffering.” — U.S. Aid administrator Samantha Power

“Aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere nearly enough… lives are on the line.” — Joe Biden

“[F]amine is imminent in Gaza. That’s why we’re trying to do everything that we can” to bring in aid, because “we know how dire the situation is in Gaza.” — White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

"There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it's moving its way south." — World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain

The U.N. is trying to avert "an entirely preventable, human-made famine" in northern Gaza. — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

“1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger – the highest number of people ever recorded – anywhere, anytime” as a result of an “entirely manmade disaster”. — Guterres, again.

“Famine is present in some areas of Gaza and is imminent in other areas.” — ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan

Now read this:

A UN committee of experts said in a recently released report that there is “no supporting evidence” to conclude that there is a famine in Gaza.

The 18-page report, released by the United Nations Famine Review Committee on June 4, contradicted an analysis by the US-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET)**, which reported in May that northern Gaza was “possibly” already amid famine conditions that would continue to the end of July.

The UN committee’s report said it “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.” The UN cited data gaps and questioned FEWS NET’s reliance on “multiple layers of assumptions and inference.”

According to the UN report, “While the use of assumptions and inference is standard practice in [classifying whether a region meets famine thresholds] generally, the limitations of the available body of evidence and the extent of its convergence for northern Gaza in April leads to a very high level of uncertainty regarding the current food security and nutritional status of the population.”

Or this:

Columbia University Professors Awi Federgruen and Ran Kivetz have analyzed available data and conducted research whose “findings demonstrate that sufficient amounts of food are being supplied into Gaza,” they noted in a summary of their findings presented to The Jerusalem Post.

They note that it is “a myth that Israel is responsible for famine in Gaza.” They argue that the International Criminal Court and UN have joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war [in Gaza].” 

** Update from an informed source in the USG: “FEWSNET (the outfit claiming famine) was created by and is funded by USAID. The Humanitarian Bureau funded this report and led the USG in thrusting this blood libel into the narrative picked up around the world and quoted in the ICC. AID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance is supposed to be the lead USG humanitarian arm but they have broken every humanitarian principle in this response.”

Remind you of anything? How about this:

“This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.” — Joe Biden, State of the Union.

"It is over 25,000." — Number of women and children dead in Gaza, Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense.

The numbers of killed more than one month into the war are likely “higher than is being cited.” — Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf

And now read this:

The United Nations recently roiled discussions of the Gaza death toll when the organization altered the way it cites reporting on those killed in Israel’s counterattack against Hamas. The number of women and children killed, in the tally offered by the United Nations, suddenly dropped by nearly half, even as the overall death toll was almost unchanged. Yet the revision was neither a stunning rollback, as some claimed, nor an inconsequential shift, as others insisted.

Rather, the adjusted numbers reflect a combination of U.N. missteps in evaluating conflicting information reported by Hamas-run authorities, nontransparent casualty-counting techniques and the difficulty of counting deaths in a chaotic urban conflict.

We’ve come to expect that our political leaders lie to us. Bill Clinton did have sex with that woman. There are indeed leaders who have “done as much as president as this administration’s doing. Period.” Hunter Biden is probably not “one of the brightest, most decent men.” And yes, Donald Trump also had sex with that woman (you choose which), didn’t build his border wall, and other and sundry falsehoods (though he didn’t say you should drink bleach for COVID).

But these lies about the Israel-Hamas war are qualitatively different, less about saving one’s own skin, or aggrandizing one’s record, and more akin to the lies we once heard from the Soviets, like “AIDS was invented in a lab,” aimed at furthering a sinister agenda. What is that agenda? And who do U.S. officials lying seek to appease with their falsehoods? We know what the United Nations is doing: furthering its agenda of institutionalized, virulent antisemitism. What are the Americans doing? Why is the Biden administration lying systematically to the American people and the world about Gaza?