A report from the United Nations evaluating the nutrition of Gaza’s children and women of childbearing age has countered claims made by global aid agencies, medical journals, church leaders, and the United Nations’ own affiliates of widespread starvation and a famine engineered by Israel.
The research, led by UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, found that “malnutrition is not only significantly below the critical values—it is exceptionally low in regional comparison,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced.
In fact, the study published on July 22, 2026, shows that the nutritional status of children and women of reproductive age (15–49 years) in Gaza surpasses that of neighboring Arab states and even some European countries.
The research, led by UNICEF ... found that “malnutrition is not only significantly below the critical values—it is exceptionally low in regional comparison.”
The proportion of children in Gaza under 5 years of age with acute malnutrition is between 0.2 and 0.8 percent, the study concludes. Gaza’s pre-war rate was 0.8 percent, a relatively low level comparable to developed countries and below neighboring Arab countries. By comparison, the proportion of children under 5 suffering from acute malnutrition is 2.9 percent in Egypt, 2.0 percent in Jordan, over 12 percent in Syria, and 4.0 percent in Bulgaria.
The study measured the children’s weight, height, and mid-upper-arm circumference, using the data to calculate the weight-for-height z-score (WHZ), the standard indicator used by the World Health Organization and other health care agencies to assess levels of acute malnutrition.
“Wasting by WHZ is low across all domains, suggesting no widespread acute malnutrition at population level,” the study notes. It also indicated that 4 percent of children in Gaza are overweight or obese, with Khan Younis/Rafah showing the highest overweight prevalence at 4.8 percent.
The study pointed out that unhealthy food consumption is high across domains, reaching 78.2 percent in Khan Younis/Rafah, with zero fruit or vegetable consumption at high levels, especially in Gaza City/North at 64.0 percent. “These findings highlight poor diet quality despite low acute malnutrition,” it observed.
“In other words: There is no famine in Gaza. Malnutrition is not only significantly below the critical values—it is exceptionally low in regional comparison. Anyone who is still open to arguments can look at the empirical data themselves,” the Foreign Ministry’s post said.
“When a U.N. (no friend of Israel) organization (UNESCO) debunks the lie that Israel was ‘starving kids,’ it’s worth a read.”
“This is awkward for Israel haters. When a U.N. (no friend of Israel) organization (UNESCO) debunks the lie that Israel was ‘starving kids,’ it’s worth a read. Israel genocidal? They botched it again!” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posted on X.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, echoed Huckabee, tweeting: “Once again, the ‘starvation in Gaza’ blood libel is falling apart. Don’t expect apologies. Don’t expect corrections. And certainly don’t expect corrective headlines or prime-time mea culpas.”
In May 2026, an Israeli government briefing, titled “Laundering Propaganda: How UN actors manipulated information in the Gaza War,” warned that U.N. agencies were not only “laundering Hamas data” but portraying information collected in “highly misleading ways” to support the narrative that Israel was preventing aid from entering Gaza.
“Throughout the war, U.N. statistics on the supply of aid into Gaza were significantly partial yet were misleadingly presented in U.N. reports and statements as comprehensive,” the briefing stated.
In May 2024, the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of the war crime of the “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”
Khan noted that expert medical witnesses interviewed by his office had confirmed the “acute, visible, and widely known” effects of using starvation as a warfare strategy in Gaza. “Such actions have led to widespread malnutrition, dehydration, and extreme suffering, with a growing death toll among Palestinians that includes infants, young children, and women,” he said.
This is not the first time political agendas led the United Nations to falsely find starvation, only to reverse course.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres also warned that “1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger—the highest number of people ever recorded—anywhere, anytime.”
The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, published a study led by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in October 2025, saying that “tens of thousands of preschool-aged children in the Gaza Strip are suffering from preventable acute malnutrition and facing an increased risk of mortality.”
High-profile church leaders, including Cardinal Pietro Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, reiterated the narrative of a famine. “You don’t see starvation. You experience starvation,” Pizzaballa remarked. After visiting Gaza in December 2025, Pizzaballa said that “the situation of famine is behind us.” However, few Gazans can afford to purchase food, he said.
This is not the first time political agendas led the United Nations to falsely find starvation, only to reverse course. Progressives and church leaders, critical of 1990s-era U.S. sanctions on Iraq, claimed starvation and malnutrition had caused a half-million Iraqi deaths. They cited a UNICEF report, not cognizant that the U.N. agency had accepted data uncritically from the Iraqi government to justify their findings. Subsequently, the World Food Programme found the leading cause of death in Iraq was diabetes and hypertension because of an excess of meat and sugar in Iraqis’ diet. U.N. leaders never apologized for their false accusations and fabrications regarding supposed starvation.
