No Genocide, No Famine

By Dr. Rafael Medoff

A statistical analysis of data provided by Hamas itself has debunked claims that there was a famine during the Gaza war and that Israel committed genocide there. The analysis was undertaken by the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, that country’s leading Jewish public affairs group.

According to the latest numbers released by the Hamas Ministry of Health, the number of “non-violent deaths” in Gaza in 2025—which would include victims of starvation—was just 5,780. That was fewer than the number of nonviolent deaths in Gaza in 2022, the year before the war.

The Hamas statistics also disprove the widespread claims by the news media and advocacy groups that civilian bystanders were the majority of the fatalities in Gaza during the war.

In fact, 76.6% of the Gaza fatalities were battlefield combatants, and 70.1% were killed in “direct targeting” by Israel, according to the new study. There was “significant and growing over-representation of military-age males [among deaths in Gaza] since early 2024.”

As for the genocide claim, “Gaza in 2025 experienced natural population growth of 25,577, 1.2% of the population,” the report found—a growth rate which is higher than most countries and is higher than the world average. “Populations are not expected to grow rapidly during genocides,” the study points out.