Friday

September 4th, 2026

Insight

The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax

David Harsanyi

By David Harsanyi

Published Sept. 4, 2026

 The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax
SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY JWR UPDATE. IT'S FREE. (AND NO SPAM!) Just click here.

In May of 2025, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, went on BBC Radio and told the audience that 14,000 babies in Gaza were going to die "in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them."

Two days? Fourteen thousand babies.

According to UNICEF, there are around 20,000 babies in the entirety of Gaza. Which means 70% of all infants were in danger of dying in mere hours. An "utterly chilling" figure, Fletcher stressed.

The New York Times, along with numerous other establishment media outlets, relayed Fletcher's allegation to its credulous audience without any skepticism. The usual experts were summoned to discuss this unfolding famine on cable news. And the antisemites across social media amplified the claim.

No matter how far-fetched a story is about Israel — including preposterous evidence-free accusations that it trains dogs to rape Palestinians — papers like the New York Times will spread it to feed the perception that the Jewish state operates as a genocidal entity. And no matter how often the claims are debunked, they keep at it.

A couple of months after Fletcher's pronouncement, for instance, the New York Times ran a front-page story about starvation in Gaza featuring a haunting photograph of an emaciated Palestinian toddler named Mohammed Zakaria al Mutawaq. Unmentioned was that the boy suffered from cerebral palsy and other serious pre-existing medical conditions, and his appearance had nothing to do with hunger.

In any event, what U.N. report actually found, and even this contention was questionable, was that 14,000 cases of malnutrition might occur among the 1 million children of Gaza — not babies — if aid did not reach them over the next year.

Aid did reach them. Lots and lots of aid. The U.S.–Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation delivered around 187 million meal equivalents, plus produce, and over a million packs of supplementary food for children to Palestinians before the ceasefire.

Another report found that, despite Hamas's tactic of pilfering international aid to control the population, Israel had provided Gaza with triple the food it needed during the ceasefire. Data showed malnutrition was lower than pre-war levels.

And a year after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claimed that "famine" in Gaza was a "failure of humanity itself," a UNICEF-led "Nutrition SMART Survey Result" found that not only was there no widespread acute malnutrition in Gaza, but at 0.5%, the strip had one of the lowest rates in the region.

To find that number, a person had to delve deep into the footnotes of the study. As of this writing, the New York Times has not bothered to mention it.

By the time "clarifications" run, the stories have coagulated in the imaginations of Israel haters.

No credible person argues that Palestinians in Gaza do not suffer because of Hamas's endless nihilistic wars against Israel. But the charge of genocide — along with "famine," "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid" — has been manufactured by a conglomeration of anti-Israel organizations who've been priming the public for decades. It's Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, or some U.N. body, along with bogus "expert" organizations such as the Association of Genocide Scholars — habitually described by major media outlets as home to "world's top scholars," even though any random nonacademic can pay a simple entry fee and become a member.

There was no genocide. Not one popularly understood. And not legally. The exculpatory evidence against genocide is overwhelming.

The most significant thing to remember about the genocide charge is that international organizations had to change the way they apply the legal definition that has been in place since the 1948 Genocide Convention to smear Israel.

In the popular understanding, the term "genocide" is something akin to the mass murder of people. As a legal matter, it is defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. So, for instance, what Turkey perpetrated against the Armenians and Kurds or what the Pakistanis did to the Bengalis would be genocide.

The legal case against Israel relies on intent.

And if Israel harbors genocidal intentions, why would it deliver more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip than any army has probably ever delivered to an enemy population during wartime in history? Israel, which gave Gaza autonomy in 2005, not only provided food but also clean water, electricity, and medical aid for decades.

If Israel has genocidal intentions, why does it warn civilians with flyers, roof knocking, phone calls, and other mitigation techniques? Israel remains the only nation in the history of Earth that is allegedly intent on genocide to put its own troops in more danger to spare civilians.

Why does Israel move the populations of entire cities out of the way when trying to confront Hamas? Israel could, of course, annihilate all of Gaza within minutes if it felt like it.

If Israel has genocidal intentions, why does the Gaza war have one of the lowest combat-to-civilian death ratios in the history of modern warfare? This, despite the fact that Hamas urges its own people to become cannon fodder as a means of appealing to friendly Western journalists and intellectuals. Hamas leaders build tunnels under hospitals, schools, and mosques. They fire rockets from civilian areas. They prevent their own people from evacuating combat zones.

If Israel had genocidal intentions, there would be a lot more than 70,000 total casualties during the war. That total, it needs to be stressed, includes deaths from illness, old age, executions, murders, natural causes, and pre-existing conditions. Most importantly, it includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters — though that fact is barely ever mentioned by the mass media.

Of course, Hamas, whose charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Jews, could have surrendered and disarmed at any time, and the Palestinian people would never have to worry about the threat of food insecurity or missiles ever again. Yet, I've never witnessed a single pro-Palestinian marcher demanding that Gazans be freed from these theocratic fascists.

Of course, Israel itself is home to over 2 million Arab citizens, a fifth of the country, with full legal and voting rights, who serve in the Knesset, practice law and medicine, and attend universities. Arab Israelis have higher living standards, longer life expectancies, and greater political freedom than Arabs in most neighboring countries. If Israel's goal was ethnic cleansing, the nation is the most spectacularly incompetent operation in human history.

These blood libels, which have been spread by anti-Israel progressives for decades before the latest war, are meant to distract from the evil that was perpetrated on Oct. 7, 2023, and strip the memory of the Holocaust from the Jewish people and weaponize it against them. The survival rate of Jews under Nazi control in Europe was roughly 30% — and only because they did not have time to finish the job. The survival rate for Arab civilians during the Gaza war was somewhere around 99%.

There is no genocide. And there was no famine. There was a war. And the bad guys lost.

(COMMENT, BELOW)


Previously:
08/31/26 El-Sayed's Insane Circumcision Analogy
08/24/26 Second Amendment backward; NYT attempts to horrify on supposed 'Right to Kill'
08/10/26 Abdul el Sayed is an American tragedy
08/10/26 Fauci's legacy: Shattered public trust
07/31/26 Fauci's Cowardly Fifth Amendment Evasion
07/27/26 Neither Party Is Talking About What Voters Actually Care About
07/20/26 Luddites Are Winning the Data Center Debate
07/13/26 AOC Should Thank Baby Boomers for the World They Left Her
07/03/26 The United States Has Always Been at War
07/01/26 The Socialist Revolution Will Eat the Dem Party
06/19/26 Why Is the Trump Administration Taking Orders from the Iranians?
06/12/26 Even Without His Controversies, Graham Platner Is Just a Lightweight Extremist
06/08/26 Southern Poverty Law Center's REAL scam
06/01/26 Dems Are in No Position to Lecture Anyone About Candidates
05/25/26 Jeff Bezos Is Right About Capitalism, Wrong About Taxes
05/11/26 Why Stay in NATO if Europe Isn't Willing to Help Us?
05/01/26 Nazi Tattoo? Hamas Defender? No Problem, Says Chuck Schumer, a self-styled defender of Jewish interests
04/24/26 James Madison Saw Abigail Spanberger Coming
04/20/26 Hey, Socialists, We've Already Figured Out the Supermarket
04/16/26 Argentina Is Booming -- Capitalism Remains Undefeated
04/13/26Everyone Knows What the Dems' AIPAC Obsession Is Really About
03/27/26 Trump's Iran Deal Must Be Nothing Like Obama's
03/24/26 Class-War Economics Is Counterproductive and Un-American
03/20/26 Paul Ehrlich is dead. Regrettably, his legacy isn't
03/13/26 When 'Islamophobia' Becomes a License to Lie
03/06/26 Trump eradicates 47 years of feckless foreign policy
03/02/26 What Trump Should Tell the American People About Iran
02/20/26 Yes, Dems are crazy
02/20/26 Obama Is in No Position to Lecture Us About Decency
02/13/26 Shut Up and Ski
02/06/26 Don't Cry for The Washington Post, It Helped Destroy Media
01/30/26 Price Controls Won't Work Any Better for Republicans Than It Does Dems
01/16/26 The Left's Silence on Iran Is NOT Hypocrisy
12/26/25: For JD Vance, Free Speech Only Means His Friends Can't Be Criticized
12/12/25: The Left Doesn't Believe in the Constitutional Order
12/07/25: War Powers Are Dead
11/27/25: MTG Embodies the Inanity of Populism
11/14/25: Gaslighting Americans is latest Dem Disaster
11/11/25: Trump's Filibuster Nuke Would Hand Dems the Keys To Remake America
11/04/25: Let's Talk About the Real Genocide of Christians in Africa
10/16/25: Obamacare Is a Massive Failure. The GOP Shouldn't Bail It Out
10/10/25: Why Aren't 'Ceasefire Now!' Activists Celebrating Trump's Gaza Peace Deal?
09/12/25: Israel's Strike on Qatar Should Have Happened Years Ago
09/05/25: An Open Letter to My Esteemed Colleagues at the International Association of Genocide Scholars
08/29/25: The President Doesn't Get to Dictate How We Express Ourselves
08/22/25: Is Socialism as Popular as the Media Think?
08/15/25: Save the Little Sisters of the Poor!
08/08/25: RFK Jr.'s War on Vaccines and Public Health Continues
08/01/25: Europe's Recognition of 'Palestine' Is a Cynical Joke
07/18/25: Legacy Media Still Covering for Biden
06/27/25: Trump Learned the Lessons of Iraq
05/30/25: We Have No Constitutional or Moral Duty to Subsidize Harvard
05/30/25: Welcome to the Intifada, America
05/16/25: Scapegoating Biden Isn't Going to Solve the Dems' Problems
05/09/25: The Pulitzer Prizes Have Become a Sad Joke
05/05/25: How Do You Do, Fellow White People? Tim Walz Says Hello!
04/25/25: Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes a Powerful Argument for School Choice
04/18/25: If Everyone Is an Expert, No One Is
03/31/25: The Left's Imaginary COVID 'Reckoning'
03/21/25: Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists -- Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
03/03/25: Mitch McConnell: A GOP Hall of Famer?
02/21/25: RFK's Dangerous Autism Lie
02/14/25: It's Time to End the EV Racket
02/07/25: If You Really Support Immigration, Stop Excusing Chaos
02/03/25: Trump's Gaza Proposal Makes Complete Sense
01/24/25: How Biden's Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power
01/17/25: Israel Makes a Deal With the Actual Devil
01/13/25: Why Javier Milei Matters
12/20/24: The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
12/13/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
12/09/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
11/08/24: Don't Trash the Constitution to Dunk on the Libs
11/08/24: This 'liberation' will NOT be reported
11/01/24: HARRIS Is the Bigger Threat to the Constitutional Order
09/20/24: Fact checked! Harris Is the Extremist
07/13/24: Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
06/30/23: Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by 'Extreme Weather'
03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
04/01/22: Recuse Yourself, Joe Biden
03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?

Columnists

Toons