U.N.-backed monitor’s starvation lie exposed 

"Data released by an authoritative global malnutrition tracking organization has demonstrated that a crucial hunger threshold was never breached in Gaza during a period in which a famine declaration in the territory fueled intense criticism of Israel and played a key role in the country’s isolation on the world stage.

The figures released last month by the Global Nutrition Cluster’s State of Palestine department, along with mortality statistics from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, raise serious doubts about the findings of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system (IPC) famine monitoring organization over the summer, though experts say devastating malnutrition was still rampant in the Strip, even if not at levels previously claimed.

The October data from the nutrition cluster shows that malnutrition levels in Gaza in July and August were some 23 percent lower than figures used by the IPC to underpin a declaration of famine. At the same time, while figures on ‘malnutrition-related deaths’ spiked in that period, the level of excess mortality appears to have been greatly below what would be expected during a famine...

‘The whole famine narrative is used to accuse Israel of deliberate starvation,’ said Mark Zlochin, an independent data analyst who has closely monitored the IPC’s reports and drew attention to the new data when it was published in mid-October...

Arnon Yafin, a data analyst and member of the Gaza Humanitarian Forum who has critiqued the IPC’s August report, assessed that the rate of death from malnutrition in Gaza in the 46 day period from July 1 to August 15 was at least three times lower than famine levels...

‘Does the IPC report treat Israel fairly? There are severe methodological flaws in the report, which are partially political and partially natural,’ he said. ‘You can always expect some flaws — but these are big enough to say it did not meet IPC famine levels.’"