PMO Slams UN Gaza Famine Declaration As ‘Modern Blood Libel,’ Highlights Israeli Aid Efforts

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office denounced the United Nations declaration of famine in parts of the Gaza Strip, calling it “an outright lie” and a “modern blood libel.”

“Israel does not have a policy of starvation. Israel has a policy of preventing starvation,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement posted to X. “The only ones being intentionally starved in Gaza are the Israeli hostages.”

According to the PMO, the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report ignores the scale of Israel’s humanitarian efforts and overlooks evidence of falling food prices inside Gaza. The statement pointed to drops in the costs of oil, sugar, salt, flour, yeast, and chickpeas, which it attributed to the continued entry of humanitarian supplies. The origin of the price data was not clarified.

Citing figures from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the PMO said Israel has enabled the entry of millions of tons of aid into Gaza since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre.

The statement further highlighted the work of the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and other NGOs operating under Israeli facilitation, which it said have provided millions of hot meals to residents of Gaza.

The PMO also accused the UN of withholding aid. It pointed to UN data from July showing that of 1,012 aid trucks collected, only 10 reached warehouses, while the rest were looted before reaching civilians. In addition, the PMO charged that the UN had refused to distribute “hundreds of pallets of food” from the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

Acknowledging that “temporary shortages” of aid have occurred, the PMO said these were addressed through airdrops, maritime shipments, safe transport corridors, and GHF distribution sites staffed by American companies. The statement blamed the shortages on “Hamas’s systematic theft.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry also issued a sharp response, accusing the IPC of producing a “fabricated report to fit Hamas’s fake campaign.” According to the ministry, the IPC “twisted its own rules and ignored its own criteria just to produce false accusations against Israel,” alleging that the monitor lowered its famine threshold from 30% to 15% for this report and disregarded its second benchmark of mortality rates.

The IPC report stated that its analysis of data from July 1 to August 15 showed that Gaza had reached famine thresholds for starvation and acute malnutrition. While acknowledging challenges in collecting mortality figures, the monitor said it was reasonable to conclude that famine-level death rates had likely been reached.

The Foreign Ministry dismissed those findings as baseless, claiming the IPC report was “based on Hamas lies laundered through organizations with vested interests.” The ministry’s statement concluded: “The report will be thrown into the despicable trash bin of political documents.”