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For the first time, the UN-backed body responsible for monitoring food security has determined that Gaza City and its surrounding area are experiencing a famine that is expected to spread as nearly a quarter of Palestinians still alive in the Gaza Strip after almost two years of war are suffering through extreme food shortages. 

On Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) raised its assessment of the situation in parts of Gaza to the highest level of its food insecurity scale.

“Just when it seems there are no words left to describe the living hell in Gaza, a new one has been added: ‘famine,’” stated United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in response to the news. “This is not a mystery — it is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment and a failure of humanity itself.”

Guterres placed the blame for the famine, which is currently affecting more than 500,000 people, at the feet of Israel’s government. 

“People are starving. Children are dying. And those with the duty to act are failing,” he said. “As the occupying power, Israel has unequivocal obligations under international law — including the duty of ensuring food and medical supplies of the population.”

For its part, Israel rejected the findings. 

“There is no famine in Gaza,” said Oren Marmorstein, a spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry. 

He argued that the IPC report is “based on Hamas-lies” and accused the group of fabricating it. 

“Unbelievably, the IPC twisted its own rules and ignored its own criteria just to produce false accusations against Israel: the IPC changed its own global standard, cutting the 30 percent threshold to 15 percent for this report only, and totally ignoring its second criterion of death rate, solely to serve Hamas’s fake campaign,” Marmorstein added.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Major-General Ghassan Alian added that the report is based on “partial and unreliable sources” and “blatantly ignores” Israel’s “extensive humanitarian efforts.”

The UN, however, called it “irrefutable testimony.” 

“It is a famine in 2025. A 21st century famine, watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history,” said UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher. “It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It is a famine on all of our watch.” 

The IPC findings will put even more international pressure on Israel to end the war it launched in retaliation for the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. That conflict has not only cost the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians but has led to international condemnation of Israel and put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime on the defensive. 

Australia, Canada, and France recently announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state next month, with Britain saying it would join them unless a ceasefire has been reached by then. 

The IPC finding will only add to the chorus of individuals, organizations, and countries saying that Israel is committing war crimes, which is why Alian, the IDF general who serves as the coordinator for his country’s activities in the occupied territories, urged others not to jump to conclusions. 

“We expect the international community to act responsibly and not be swept away by false narratives and unfounded propaganda, but rather to examine the complete data and the facts on the ground,” he said. 

That, of course, is a problem because Israel makes this extremely difficult. Netanyahu’s regime tries to tightly control the narrative and restrict which information from Gaza reaches the world. 

However, in a world in which everybody has a camera, that has proven to be impossible, and people across the globe have been horrified by photos of children displaying signs of severe malnutrition. 

As a result, while Israel may be winning the military conflict, it is badly losing the PR war right now and took another heavy loss on Friday.

In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.