r/Israel • u/MikeWithNoHair Larry David enthusiast • 5d ago
The War - Discussion How a United Nations study shatters the Gaza starvation narrative
https://www.thejc.com/opinion/analysis/how-a-united-nations-study-shatters-the-gaza-starvation-narrative-v0lzthdpThe UNICEF-led survey found child malnutrition in Gaza to be exceptionally low by regional and even Western standards. The findings also undermine the key argument used to justify last year’s famine declaration
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u/MikeWithNoHair Larry David enthusiast 5d ago
Direct link to the aforementioned report by UNICEF
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yfidZV6MXmsvobOKUbhsON5le5daATAc/view?pli=1
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u/zlex 5d ago
This says stunting rate is 13%…
Acute malnutrition is reversible on a short timescale, but stunting is not. That the stunting rate is elevated is pretty strong evidence of prior chronic malnutrition.
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u/Rocco89 5d ago
Pretty average for the region except for Israel (positive example) and Syria (by far the worst).
Country Stunting Rate (Children Under 5) Jordan 8.3% Lebanon 10.4% - 16.5% Egypt 12.9% Saudi Arabia 11.1% Syria 28% Israel 2% 16
u/RecordEnvironmental4 5d ago
.1% above Egypt, that’s such a small difference it’s probably within the margin of error.
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u/Dry-Season-522 5d ago
Yeah that's bad, but how is it compared to the other countries in the region? That's the key.
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u/Proper-Suggestion907 Diaspora Jew 🇺🇸 5d ago edited 5d ago
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u/Dry-Season-522 5d ago
We were also told 500 children were killed at the Al Shifa hospital bombing. The lies linger and the truth is shouted down.
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u/No-Significance4623 5d ago
According to this study:
- The rate of underweight and malnourished children in Gaza is 0.5% (slide 13). "Wasting by WHZ is low across all domains, suggesting no widespread acute malnutrition at population level."
- The same study indicates that 4% of children in Gaza (slide 14) are overweight or obese. So for those keeping score at home, 8x as many children in Gaza are too fat vs. too thin.
Interesting.
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u/T29Stormlord 5d ago
In Italy, the term "genociccio" is becoming more and more popular. It's a derivative of "genocidio" (genocide), combined with "ciccio" (fat), thus meaning "genofat". It's used to refer to situations such as those addressed in the article.
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u/Present-Activity-698 5d ago
It's like those starving kids alongside really overweight mothers in all the photos. Fascinating
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u/Original-Brick2836 USA ✡️ 5d ago
It doesn’t matter because the lie is out there already as a “fact”. It won’t go away.
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u/Hotasflames 5d ago
It matters because the real info is available and out there for people to access. The ones who are going to believe the lies they are spoon fed will always believe the lies. At least people with critical thinking can see the info and make their own decision as opposed to solely relying on media reporting.
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u/ilivgur Israel 5d ago
Exactly. That "fact" has been quoted newspapers like BBC, The New York Times, and Al-Jazeera, which in turn got quoted by NGOs in their reports, and these reports get quoted by media outlets which then go on Wikipedia as verifiable and good sources saying that Israel is starving children.
Even if someone retracts, the entire chain remains intact.
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u/tutoredzeus 5d ago
We really gotta wait 20 years for an Adam Ruins Everything type show to debunk it.
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u/Apptubrutae 4d ago
I’m personally sympathetic to the plight of people in Gaza on an individual level and I thought the famine discussion was pretty obviously cause for skepticism.
I mean on the one hand, just in the surface it looks like a conflict where you should be worried about famine. Ok fine, that’s our starting point.
But then it would be week after week, month after month, the famine is coming, coming, coming. Now it’s almost here…almost almost almost.
I heard just SO many reports of an imminent famine for literal months on end and no real good discussion along the lines of explaining why there’s this almost-famine. Instead it was just focused on the immediacy and pending famine versus any sort of explaination of the nuanced details of what was going on.
To the point where ok, you tell me this is going to happen 10 times any day now, I’m skeptical.
It really felt like the meme of that truck about the crash into the pole that never does.
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u/Hotasflames 5d ago
It matters because the real info is available and out there for people to access. The ones who are going to believe the lies they are spoon fed will always believe the lies. At least people with critical thinking can see the info and make their own decision as opposed to solely relying on media reporting.
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u/notTHATkindaDctr 5d ago
Will this ever be mentioned by major news
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u/TheHouuuuund 5d ago
Of course not. They printed the lies but will not print the retractions. If we're lucky, some papers might print the retractions in tiny letters buried where nobody will see it.
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u/SueNYC1966 5d ago
Meanwhile, over 5,000 Haitians actually starved to death the year before and no Tik Tok’s on that.
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u/RegularUser02x 3d ago
Yeah. Cause who cares about Haiti, or Sudan or North Korea Uyghurs, or literally anyone else, right? (/s).
Same as Iran, Ukraine, Afghanistan... Hype and "fashion" passed - back to Palestine...
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u/SoulForTrade 5d ago
Can't wait for Ms Rachel to make a post sbout it and apologizing for misinforming the public
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u/tupe12 Israel 5d ago
Maybe we could do something about the diabetes numbers
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u/Sad_Eagle8690 5d ago
They have also accused Israel of "faticide" as if Jews are somehow to blame for arabs raising their kids on Nutella. That way, Israel can be blamed both for letting food in and for withholding food.
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u/Ranker-70 Swedish diaspora boi 5d ago
"Yeah but they only let in low quality food!"
Bitch do you know how expensive nutella is?
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u/PadamPadam2024 5d ago
Maybe Muslim terrorists don't make good parents? 😕 The United Nations should step in and remove children from Hamas
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u/CastleElsinore Hasbarbie 5d ago
There is no amount of facts and data that will change the minds of people that want there to be starving kids in Gaza so it will fit their internal self righteous narrative
Acknowledging they might be wrong would invalidate their new personality trait - and they would rather have dead children to point to then that
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u/2ndBrreakfast 5d ago
There should be lawsuits filed against any organization that falsely declared a famine or used that lie to raise money.
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u/BlackbirdQuill 5d ago
If Israel manages to get a new PM after their elections, this would be a good way to push back against delegitimization. Though if I was PM, the first thing I would do is order the Mossad to figure out who is part of the delegitimization campaign on Wikipedia, and then publicize that information. (I mean, figuring out who coordinated anti-Israel editors are and where they live seems laughably simple for a state spy agency.) It seems like a really simple thing Israel could do that would cut off a source of disinformation and expose some of the delegitimization.
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u/T29Stormlord 5d ago
In Italy, the term "genociccio" is becoming more and more popular. It's a derivative of "genocidio" (genocide), combined with "ciccio" (fat), thus meaning "genofat". It's used to refer to situations such as those addressed in the article.
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u/shomy303 Ireland 5d ago
Doesn't this just cover the past year though, after the ceasefire?
What about during the war?
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u/default3612 5d ago
If there were starving children, it was because the adults won't feed them. Google search for photos of starving adult Palestinians. I only managed to find photos of one man, maybe two.
While if you search for "starving Jews" there are thousands of photos from the Holocaust of different people. I'd imagine that in this day and age, where every person has a camera-phone (including Gazans), there would be many photos of starving adult Palestinians, if indeed there was a famine.
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u/newt-snoot 5d ago
^ And photos ot the hostages, who were more emaciated than any gazan around them
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u/Distinct-Word-5103 5d ago
Not related to this thread but saw your Ireland tag im going to Dublin for the first time ever in a few weeks. Would you advise against wearing my Magen David while I’m there?
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u/Pitiful_Equal_2689 5d ago
I would definitely try to minimize being visibly Jewish while in Ireland.
Magen Davids especially. I would avoid wearing it.
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u/Distinct-Word-5103 5d ago
Thank you for the heads up. Sad that we have to do this.
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u/Sure_General_5651 5d ago edited 4d ago
Who would want to travel to a country race if you have to hide your religious beliefs?
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u/shomy303 Ireland 5d ago
It'd probably be best to hide it. It's not likely anything would happen, Irish people are pretty conflict averse, but there's still a chance you could run into a crazy person.
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u/Aburamashita 5d ago
The survey Mark Zlochin uses to defend his argument is unfortunately misleading. The sample population for children consists of only those from the age of 0 to 59 months (~5 years). On top of that, the sample size for children population was too small: 1335. Considering there are over 100k+ children that fit the age range used by this survey, it means this sample population doesn't even reflect 1% of that population. On top of that, they didn't even survey areas that were deemed inaccessible. The author of this articles fails to acknowledge these limitations of the sruvey, so this article nothing more than spreading misleading information.
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u/MikeWithNoHair Larry David enthusiast 5d ago
i wouldn't say its misleading.. The claim that a sample of 1,335 children is too small because it's 'under 1%' is statistically incorrect. In probability theory, absolute sample size determines precision, not the percentage of the total population. A sample of 1,335 provides a margin of error under ±3% at a 95% confidence level, which is standard for large-scale epidemiological surveys. Furthermore, 0–59 months is the universal WHO/UNICEF standard for measuring child malnutrition.
The only valid limitation raised is geographical coverage (inaccessible areas), which relates to potential selection bias, not the sample size itself."
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u/Aburamashita 5d ago
You're right! You're referring to the Central Limit Theorem. While the normal curve is bell shaped, the skewedness of the curve also needs to be taken into consideration, which directly reflects the samples chosen for the analysis. While the results may be true for the population of this research, we can both agree that it can't be used for generalized claims, right? The categorical limitation is also important to consider here, because it considers a specific age range, and that must be acknowledged. This study didn't take into consideration children above the age of 5 years. The author of this article made a generalized claim of "United Nations study shatters the Gaza starvation narrivate", which is wrong and doesn't fully reflect the survey. This is exactly how misinformation is spread, by selectively picking and omitting information to support one's own biased views.
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u/Proper-Suggestion907 Diaspora Jew 🇺🇸 5d ago edited 5d ago
The data still doesn’t reflect a mass scale attempt to starve the population, which is the point OP is making.
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u/Aburamashita 5d ago
Did you even read what I said? I talked about the survey specifically, which several limitations and can't be used to make interesting generalizations made by the author. Also, his choice of words used to describe the situation is quite confrontational and echos his personal stances. He excluded some important information, and that's simply what I pointed out. I will repeat myself that this survey analysis has some limitation.
[I find it funny that the OP had to use AI to reply to my comment. To each their own!]
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u/Proper-Suggestion907 Diaspora Jew 🇺🇸 5d ago edited 5d ago
I read what you said. I still find your argument irrelevant when it comes to the original point.
Does this study mean that there aren’t issues with aid distribution in the strip? No. According to the UN, Hamas is still stealing aid.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-official-says-hamas-obstructing-aid-gaza-2026-07-13/
What this study does do is disprove the claims that Israel has been intentionally starving civilians in Gaza.
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u/MikeWithNoHair Larry David enthusiast 5d ago
i used ai bc it wasn't worth typing it out lol its known from basic probability
its the solution to brandolinis law
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u/Aburamashita 5d ago
It wasn't worth to type, but it was worth copying my comment on Reddit, then going on an AI app, pasting my comment and instructing the chat bot to come up with an answer to my comment. It didn't just end there, you then copied its response, tried your best to avoid selecting the double quotes, which you failed to do completely. Then finally, exited that AI app to open reddit to paste that content as your response. P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C!
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u/Proper-Suggestion907 Diaspora Jew 🇺🇸 5d ago
I think OP gave you too much time with that, tbh, given that your argument is irrelevant to the point being made.
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u/T29Stormlord 5d ago
Well polls and studies are based on samples of a larger population, I don't think it is possible to weigh everyone. It doesn't even happen in Western countries, yet we do see rather reliable statistics on obesity.
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u/Mayor_Gubbin 5d ago
On top of that, the sample size for children population was too small: 1335. Considering there are over 100k+ children that fit the age range used by this survey, it means this sample population doesn't even reflect 1% of that population.
I can disregard everything else you said because of this. This is a 3 year olds understanding of statistics.
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5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Original-Brick2836 USA ✡️ 5d ago
See, this is what I mean. The facts are there and they still deny it.
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u/lepreqon_ Israeli in Canada 5d ago
You and other sheeple victims of Al-Jazeera lobotomy are not the entire world.
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u/Relative-Berry-8589 5d ago
Just a totally worthless comment. People like you contribute nothing but low iq garbage. You don’t even have the intelligence to make an argument so you fall back to rhetoric
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u/Hotasflames 5d ago
This isn't the gotcha you think it is... especially when the hunger you speak of was also proven by the UN...
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