Will They Ever Apologize for Lying? [Famine?]

Will They Ever Apologize for Lying?

Adapted from Yehuda Teitelbaum's piece
October 20, 2025

It was always strange that Hamas managed to convince so much of the world that Gaza was starving. Anyone who has studied or lived through real famine knows it looks nothing like what we were shown. Real famine is unmistakable. There is no ambiguity. It strips away everything. In Yemen, Sudan, and Ethiopia, the evidence was everywhere: children so emaciated they could not stand, mothers too weak to carry them, families dying in the streets because there was simply nothing left to eat. Those images were burned into the world’s memory because they could not be denied.

When you looked at Gaza, none of that existed. There were no pictures of groups of skeletal children sitting in rubble, no photos of neighborhoods reduced to wandering ghosts. What we saw instead were markets filled with produce, bakeries still open, and restaurants crowded late into the night. Countless videos—posted not by Israeli sources or foreign reporters, but by Gazans themselves—showed normal commerce and daily life continuing amid the war. That did not mean life was easy. War creates chaos. Distribution networks break down. Prices rise. People go hungry. But that is not famine.

Famine: A Total Collapse, Not Gaza's Reality

Famine is the collapse of an entire social fabric. It is starvation so deep that the weak simply disappear. It is the unraveling of families and the death of entire communities. It cannot be hidden or managed. When famine takes hold, the evidence becomes overwhelming and impossible to ignore. Gaza never looked like that.

Real Famine (Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia)	Gaza's Reality
Emaciated children unable to stand	Markets stocked with produce
Mothers too weak to carry infants	Bakeries and restaurants operating
Mass deaths in streets	Gazan videos showing daily commerce
Total societal breakdown	>2 million tons of aid entered during war

The difference matters because words matter. Declaring “famine” is not just describing a humanitarian crisis—it triggers a political and legal framework. It transforms a tragic situation into an accusation of criminal intent.

A Decades-Old Lie: Starvation Claims Since 2005

The story itself was not new. Gaza had supposedly been starving since 2005. Each year, the same claims returned under different slogans: siege, starvation, food insecurity, blockade. The language shifted, but the accusation remained the same. In 2018, Oxfam declared that a million Gazans could not feed their families. Others echoed it without evidence, repeating it because it was convenient and effective.

Meanwhile, Israel became the only country in modern history to send food into the territory of an enemy it was fighting. Millions of pounds of supplies crossed the border—even as rockets were launched at the crossing points. Over two million tons of humanitarian aid entered Gaza during the war, more than enough to feed its civilian population. Yet the United Nations still declared famine. Why? Because once you call it that, the entire framework shifts. A famine moves the narrative from a battlefield to a courtroom. It turns a war for survival into a moral trial. It lets international organizations accuse Israel of crimes rather than confront Hamas for creating the conditions of war in the first place.

Hamas's Narrative Warfare: Control and Manipulation

That was always the purpose. The famine story was never meant to describe reality. Hamas understood it could not win militarily. Its only chance was to win through narrative. Every image of destruction, every hungry child, every collapsed building could be repurposed into a weapon.

Inside Gaza, food was never truly the issue. Control was. Hamas controlled everything: aid distribution, warehouses, access to supplies. Loyalists received food first. Fighters and their families were fed before anyone else. Ordinary people were kept desperate because desperation creates sympathy. The goal was to sustain the crisis long enough to turn public opinion against Israel.

Hamas Tactic	Goal
Control aid warehouses	Prioritize fighters and loyalists
Keep civilians desperate	Generate international sympathy
Repurpose suffering	Weaponize images against Israel

The Enablers: A Complicit International Ecosystem

And the world helped make that possible. The repetition was the point. Once said often enough, the lie began to sound like truth.

Actor	Role in the Lie
UN/UNRWA	Declared famine despite evidence; funded perpetual refugee status with billions from the West
NGOs (e.g., Oxfam)	Echoed unverified claims as "analysis"
Media	Published Hamas press releases as verified reporting
Politicians	Repeated talking points for convenience, ignoring their own funding of the system

If the same claims had been made about Yemen or Sudan, the world would have demanded evidence—photographers, researchers, on-the-ground verification. But in Gaza, the absence of evidence was treated as proof. The more the claim unraveled, the louder it was repeated.

The Damage Done: Propaganda Becomes History

Now that the war has seemingly ended, the truth is difficult to ignore. Gaza endured hardship and hunger. Lives were lost. But there was no famine. What there was, was manipulation—by Hamas, by NGOs, by journalists who knew better, and by international bodies that long ago abandoned integrity for politics.

Yet the damage is done. The famine that never existed will live on in the archives of the United Nations, in the speeches of activists, and in the history books of the future. That is how propaganda becomes history. The lie survives because it is useful, and the truth fades because it is inconvenient.

The famine narrative was never intended to help the people of Gaza. It was designed to weaponize their suffering against Israel. It turned the defense of a nation into a moral indictment, ensuring that even in victory, Israel would stand accused.