Farmisht about Gaza?

In Yiddish, פאַרמישט (farmisht, pronounced almost exactly like 'famished' in English) means 'confused'.  So, is Gaza famished, or are we farmisht?

On 22 August 2025, the IPC Global Partnership – a coalition of charities, governmental and UN agencies – classified the situation in one of Gaza’s 5 governorates as ‘Famine’.  Now let’s unpack that label.

The shifting shifty definition

Famine isn’t a new phenomenon. What’s new in our modern world is an institutionalised effort to combat it.  This gave birth to a plethora of charities and aid agencies, each with its own priorities, standards, procedures and methods of providing relief.

Faced with recurring famine in Africa, by 2004 a UN agency sponsored the creation of a unified, scientifically rigorous methodology for quantifying food insecurity.  Dubbed ‘the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’ and eventually codified in a Technical Manual, it defined 5 degrees of severity, with ‘Famine’ being the worst level.  To assess that, it quantified 3 different criteria:

1. Household food consumption;
2. Acute malnutrition;
3. Mortality.

Thresholds were established for each of these, with ‘Famine’ requiring “[e]vidence that all three criteria” exceed their respective thresholds.

By 2009, a bureaucratic apparatus called IPC Global Partnership (backed by the UN, charities and aid agencies) was established to apply the IPC methodology.  In practice, this put the process in the hands of a small army of eager activists and activist scientists.  They’re typically keen to find ‘Famine’: it justifies their own existence, but also finds favour in the eyes of their stakeholders – charities and agencies whose role is to deliver aid.  That's where Science meets Politics.

In October 2024, as the conflict in Gaza entered its second year, the IPC produced a ‘Famine Factsheet,’ introducing a new concept: ‘Famine with Reasonable Evidence’:

“An area is classified in Famine with reasonable evidence if there is clear evidence that two of the three thresholds . . . have been reached, and analysts reasonably assess [that] . . . the third outcome has likely been reached.”

So instead of “all three criteria”, this new classification required just two, with the third left at the discretion of ‘analysts’ – rather than based on evidence.  But, at least, “clear evidence” was seemingly required for the other two criteria.

Yet in May 2025 – while Israel and the US promoted Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as an alternative to the UN aid apparatus – the IPC issued a Technical Note, this time claiming:

“An area is classified in Famine with reasonable evidence if minimally adequate evidence is available on two out of the three . . . to support the classification.”

To summarise: in 2019, the IPC required reliable evidence over all 3 criteria; by 2024, this was reduced in practice to “clear evidence” for 2 out of 3; and by 2025, the requirement was just “minimally adequate evidence,” again for 2 out of 3…

The Technical Manual has not been updated: that would require agreement from too many stakeholders.  Yet the goalposts were surreptitiously shifted by means of ‘factsheets’ and ‘notes’.  So much for ‘scientific integrity’!

Getting in vs. getting there

IPC assessments are entirely based on outcomes, not inputs.  I.e., they classify famine in an area only by looking at population data (food consumption, physical signs of malnutrition, mortality), not at the amounts of food going in.

This is justified: the fact that food enters a territory doesn’t mean it reaches everybody in sufficient quantities.  But, unlike the IPC, we may be interested in food input data, as well – if not to rebut the claim of Famine, then certainly to analyse its causes.

Fortunately, such data is available.  To preclude argument about its reliability, I’ll only use data from the IPC itself and from UN sources.  Israel claims that these numbers are understated, but let’s not get hung up on that; they’re certainly not overstated.

Firstly, however: how much food is needed in Gaza?  You may have heard or read (from the BBC and others) that the UN says ‘600 truckloads a day’.  Well, forget that number.  It’s a lie based on a misrepresentation.  UN’s own World Food Program (WFP) requires:

“At least 100 aid trucks per day to be allowed through northern, central and southern border points in a sustained and predictable manner.”

The IPC itself says:

“Estimates from the FAO21 and the WFP22 converge around 60,000 – 62,000 metric tonnes (MT) needed each month to meet minimum daily caloric requirements.”

Which boils down to the same number: 100 truckloads a day, given that a truckload of emergency food is equivalent to c. 20 metric tonnes.

So how much food is being delivered?  Again from the IPC itself:

“55,600 metric tonnes of food entered Gaza in the first half of August…”

That’s in excess of 3,700 metric tonnes (more than 185 truckloads) a day.

So how can there be famine?  The IPC, of course, blames Israel.  Even 185 truckloads daily, they say,

“remains largely insufficient to offset the prolonged deficits.”

But talking about “accumulated deficits” is utterly dishonest.  Yes, people may eat more in August, because they lived on lower rations in July.  But they cannot eat 85% more than normal; nor should they, even if they could.

In fact, in its own report, the IPC claims that, to recover the deficit

“can take months with 25% more calories than typically needed, depending on the severity of malnutrition.”

That's because eating 25% more than normal is the feasible and safe way to recover past deficits.  But in the 1^st half of August what entered the Strip was not 25%, but 85% more than needed.  And, by the way, it did not stop: truckloads continued to enter at pace.  According to COGAT (but not expressly contested by the UN) 320 truckloads entered on 17 August, 250 on 20 August, 220 on 21 August…  In total, 1,600 truckloads during the week 18-24 August alone – though some of them carried non-food aid.

Eventually, the IPC gets to the crux of the matter:

“In addition, security and operational challenges have prevented much of the incoming food from reaching the population. Aid deliveries have been severely disrupted—with 87 percent of UN trucks reportedly intercepted—reflecting the extreme desperation of the population.”

In other words, the food got into Gaza – but it didn’t reach the hungry people, because the vast majority was “intercepted” (read: looted or taken over) en-route.  IPC rather spuriously attributes this to “the extreme desperation of the population”.  But one would expect those most in need to also be the most desperate.  On the other hand, it is also claimed that those most in need were not the ones getting the food.

It's impossible to accurately determine who are the looters – whether hungry and angry people, criminal gangs or Hamas operatives (or a combination thereof): none of those groups is in the habit of issuing membership cards – and they all consist primarily of males aged of 12 to 60, who are dressed in civilian clothes and look exactly the same.  What’s clear is that Hamas and fellow travellers continue to fire their weapons for nigh on 2 years now – and they haven't subsisted all that time just on fervent prayer!

August 2025: Gazan men taking over a truck transporting aid

The point is that, if Gazans don’t get the food, it’s not because Israel doesn’t allow it in – but because it gets stolen by other Gazans.

Assessing the assessments

But, as mentioned, all this is of little relevance to the IPC: they make their determinations based on outcomes, not inputs.

Except that, in the case of Gaza, it’s not easy to reliably determine those outcomes.  Take for instance the first criterion, which assesses household food consumption.  In the Gaza Governorate, this was based mostly on surveying a sample of respondents: 504 were interviewed over the phone.  A second survey, involving 350 respondents, was apparently also conducted among the same population, but the IPC report does not make it clear how they were interviewed and whether the two samples overlapped.

Respondents are asked: “How many times, in the last 7 days have you eaten meat, fish or eggs?  Beans, lentils and peas?  Vegetables?  Fruit?  Milk/yoghurt/cheese?  Sugar?  etc.” 

Also “In the past 7 days, how many times did you have to eat less preferred/less expensive food?  How many times did you have to reduce portions?  To skip meals?  To borrow food from relatives?”

And finally “In the past 30 days, was there ever a time when there was no food in the house?  When you had to go to bed hungry?  When you went for an entire day with no food?” (answers: “Never”, “Rarely”, “Sometimes”, “Often”).

Responses are distilled into numeric scores which (after some additional ‘expert manipulation’), are compared to IPC thresholds – resulting in an assessment of food consumption.  For ‘Famine’ classification, at least 20% of households must experience ‘extremely poor food consumption’.

The second criterion is ‘Acute Malnutrition’.  This is normally assessed by surveying children aged 6-59 months.  Their weight and height are measured and compared with age-specific thresholds.  A famine classification requires at least 30% of children below norm.

But, says the IPC, performing such measurements in a conflict area is difficult.  Surveyors would have to visit remaining neighbourhoods and tent cities, armed with scales and measuring boards…  Which is why the IPC instituted a shortcut: instead of performing rigorous height-and-weight surveys, it makes do with measuring the children’s upper arm circumference.  And instead of representative population samples, they measure children who are ‘normally’ brought to medical facilities (clinics and hospitals), usually because they need treatment – either for malnutrition or for any other illness.  The age is considered irrelevant, as long as it’s within range (6-59 months).  All that’s needed is a special measuring tape, one available anyway in most such facilities.  The measurement itself takes seconds and is part of the child’s routine examination.  The ‘Famine’ threshold in this case is 15%, rather than 30%, since the method is supposedly less sensitive.

Measuring a child's upper arm circumference. Red means 'below threshold'. Obviously younger children have smaller arms - but in a representative sample age is supposed to 'even out' statistically.

The main issue here is response/result bias.  This is a known problem in all such surveys and the IPC claims that it knows how to deal with it.  But their tendency is to see under-, rather than overstating.  Not necessarily wrong: in some cultures, people hide malnutrition, out of a sense of social shame.  But Gaza is surely different.  Firstly, many inhabitants have been publicly receiving aid – for many years.  Secondly, there’s not just a political, but also a huge practical incentive to exaggerate: given the unusually high ‘interest’ that ‘the international community’ manifests in this particular conflict, reports of catastrophic famine are seen as more likely to bring not just more aid, but also an end to the war.  If you were a Gazan responding to such a survey (after 22 months of hardship, displacement, bombardments and generally shitty life – how likely would you be to ‘embellish a bit’ when answering those questions?

And how likely would you be, if you were a Palestinian nurse or doctor, to deliberately report lower arm circumferences?  All you’d need to do is ‘steal’ a few millimetres by tightening the tape a tad more; or just skew the results by preferentially measuring younger children (say, more 2-year-olds and fewer 4 year olds…)

The IPC says it ‘validates’ the data by ‘triangulation’ – meaning they look not just at one parameter, but at several; they point at the convergence of those data.  The problem with that is we’re talking about sets of unreliable data, which should all be expected to err in the same direction.

The raw data, by the way, is not published – just IPC's 'expert interpretation' thereof.  Like medieval catholic priests, the IPC 'experts' want to ensure that the Bi... err... the data are 'correctly' interpreted.

Uncounted or undead?

This should make the third criterion (malnutrition-related mortality) even more important: deaths are more difficult to manipulate.  After all, dead people have identities, families and eventually graves.

IPC’s daily mortality threshold for famine is 2 deaths per 10,000 people.  According to the IPC, more than 500,000 people live in Famine in the Gaza Governorate.  This means over 100 deaths a day.  Since the IPC classification refers to the period 1 July – 15 August 2025, the deaths add up to over 4,600.

But even the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry only claimed c. 200 deaths in that period (see here and here).

The IPC report admits that “[t]he analysis team could not conclude on mortality evidence”.  Meaning: there wasn’t even “minimally adequate evidence” for that.

Hence, this was referred to ‘assessment by experts’ – who promptly performed a sleight-of-hand: they simply claimed that Hamas was under-counting deaths.

“Different analyses indicate that MoH [Minister of Health] data systematically underestimate overall mortality, highlighting structural limitations in mortality surveillance.”

The Hamas-run Gaza Minister of Health is – let’s recall – the same ‘source’ that the UN and most journalists proclaim as ‘reliable’ in terms of counting Palestinian victims of the ‘Israeli aggression’…  And 200 instead of 4,600 is one hell of an underestimate!

As for the “[d]ifferent analyses” mentioned above, none of them is directly relevant – or even refers to the same time period that the IPC deals with!

Conclusion

IPC’s analysis is not just flawed, but fundamentally dishonest: based on moving the goalposts, on unreliable surveys and on unreasonable ‘assessments’.  It’s a betrayal of IPC’s role, of their principles and of the people they’re supposed to help.  There’s no ‘Famine’ in Gaza – not in the way they themselves defined it.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hunger.  The fact that more than enough calories get in doesn’t mean they reach all those who need them.  Not just because Hamas steals them; nor because ‘people are desperate’.  But because in Gaza – as elsewhere – the powerful (be they Hamas, criminals or just those with big elbows) take more than their fair share; some will even profit from the plight of their fellow men. 

Whatever the cause, there’s hardship and human suffering in Gaza.  But lying ain’t the way to end it.

Let’s stop fantasizing that civilians can lead quasi-normal lives, while trapped in war zones.  Let’s stop pretending that ‘a permanent ceasefire’ isn’t crowning terrorists as victors.  The only way to defeat Hamas without starving, hurting and killing innocents is allowing the latter to flee Gaza.

For those who wave the flag of 'international law' at every opportunity, here's a provision of the 4th Geneva Convention (Art. 35):

"All protected persons who may desire to leave the territory at the outset of, or during a conflict, shall be entitled to do so, unless their departure is contrary to the national interests of the State."

The UN proclaims that Palestinian civilians in Gaza are "protected persons" and requires Israel ("the State") to treat them as such.  But they oppose allowing the former to escape.

Via its refugee protection agency (UNHCR), the UN also proclaims that a neutral neighbouring state cannot legally close its border to those in danger:

"Denying access to territory and asylum procedure . . . blatantly contradicts international law and . . . provisions of the . . . Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and its Additional Protocol of 1967."

Egypt is a signatory to both the Convention and its Additional Protocol.  It has accepted more than one million refugees – mostly from war-torn Sudan and Syria; but not from Gaza.

EU member countries are also signatories.  They have accepted more than 4.3 million refugees from Ukraine; but not from Gaza.

The UK (another signatory) has instituted a special visa category for Ukrainians – 274,000 visas were issues to asylum-seekers from Ukraine; but not from Gaza.

Egypt, EU, UK... these are all countries that preach to Israel about international law and humanitarianism.

If IPC and their UN masters had any integrity, that’s what they’d advocate: for Gazans to be offered (at least temporarily) refuge – both among their Arab brethren and in the West.  Anyone not recognising the Gazans' right, in the midst of a war, to seek asylum in neutral countries is being driven by base hypocrisy and ugly antisemitism, not by noble ‘humanitarian’ concerns!