UKLFI uncovers more evidence that "Gaza famine" narrative was manufactured from poor data ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, February 24, 2025

UKLFI uncovers more evidence that "Gaza famine" narrative was manufactured from poor data

UK Lawyers for Israel has written a lengthy and comprehensive rebuttal to the accusations of famine in Gaza.

It goes into detail on many of the arguments I have written about, but the report goes beyond that showing serious methodological flaws in the reports issued by the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC) and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

The report highlights consistent mistakes by these organizations in their reports, such as misestimating the number of people in various parts of Gaza and therefore predicting famine based on incorrect amounts of incoming food per person.

The report is a bit wonky and difficult for the average person to read, which is a shame. Times of Israel does a decent job summarizing it:

A review conducted by the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) organization into allegations by international famine review bodies that famine and severe malnutrition were widespread and prevalent in Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas has found that famine did not break out in the territory according to the figures of the very organizations making the claims.

The report noted severe problems with the reports these organizations issued, due to what it said was their use of “incomplete or inaccurate data,” the inconsistent application of methodological standards, failure to take into account new data, and “potential bias” in how it interpreted and presented the information it had.

UKLFI’s review of the issue, published last week and which highlighted these criticisms, found that there was no famine in Gaza during the war, as defined by IPC standards, and that even levels of acute malnutrition were only marginally higher than pre-war figures.

That last point was one I had not previously looked at, and it is significant. If the baseline that they are using for malnutrition in Gaza is wrong, their entire analysis is wrong.

There are two major ways to calculate General Acute Malnutrition (“GAM”). One of these is the “weight-for-height Z-score” (“WHZ”); the other is the “mid-upper arm circumference” (“MUAC”). To calculate how much worse things are getting you need to compare apples to apples. But

FEWS NET compared apples to oranges.

They said that malnutrition in Gaza was at 0.8% pre-war for children under 5 based on WHZ and then compared that to numbers during the war based on MUAC. But even their own documentation showed that the pre-war MUAC malnutrition rate was at 4% - five times higher than what they used to say how bad things were getting.

In North Gaza they said the MUAC malnutrition rate was 6-9%, in February it was 12-16%, but in May it went down to 1%. The organizations assumed that the May figures were anomalous but didn't consider that the February figures were the anomalous ones; there is evidence that they were weighted towards only measuring children who were already sick.

In November, it measured MUAC malnutrition for all of Gaza at 5% and North Gaza at 2%. Given that the rate for all of Gaza was 4% before the war, this means that things were not getting significantly worse after 12 months of war - the entire "famine" narrative collapses.

The UKFLI report needs to be rewritten as a friendlier, graphics-heavy Amnesty style report to show how the entire "famine" narrative - relied heavily upon by the ICC and Western media - has been based on faulty data and faulty assumptions.