Narratives about Israel committing genocide, war crimes, and a deliberate mass starvation in the ongoing war in Gaza have been challenged, and in some cases, debunked, in a comprehensive study published on Wednesday titled “Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War (2023-2025).”
The study, published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, engaged in a critical analysis to challenge the narrative of Israeli genocide during the conflict by analyzing humanitarian reporting and casualty data.
Spanning 311 pages, the study also used quantitative analysis and forensic documentation to examine and contest widely reported claims from international organizations and courts.
Led by Prof. Danny Orbach, the authors said that their objective was to provide a factual analysis rather than a legal or moral exoneration.
The publication of the study arrives at a crucial time, as the IDF is poised to begin the Gideon’s Chariots II invasion of Gaza City, and as the International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution on Monday, which says that Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip meet the legal definition of genocide.
Divided into eight chapters, each section of the study addressed specific allegations and themes related to the conflict and its reporting.
The overarching themes that emerged from the research were a critique of humanitarian reporting, a reevaluation of casualty data, and a call for a new methodological framework for analyzing conflicts.
Challenging the Starvation Narrative
Perhaps the study’s most controversial finding concerns food supply to Gaza. The researchers said that more food entered Gaza during the war than before October 7, 2023, a claim that starkly contradicts widespread reports of imminent famine and the deliberate starvation of the Gazan population on Israel’s part.
According to the study, the frequently cited requirement of 500 aid trucks entering Gaza daily stems from what the authors called “a misrepresentation by UN bodies.” They point to pre-war UN records showing an average of only 73 food trucks per day in 2022.
The 500 figure has been regularly cited throughout the war by the UN, as well as international media outlets such as CNN, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.
Until January 17, 2025, COGAT (the Israeli Defense Ministry’s military body coordinating activities in the territories) recorded an average of 101 food trucks daily, while retroactively corrected but incomplete UNRWA data indicated 83 food trucks per day.
In a similar vein, the study said that food that entered Gaza during the ceasefire “should have sufficed until late July 2025 according to WFP [UN World Food Programme] projections.”
The researchers attributed the gap between projected sufficiency and reported shortages to “extensive looting by Hamas.”
They also disputed claims regarding Gaza’s agricultural self-sufficiency. Contrary to allegations that 44% of Gaza’s food comes from local agriculture, the study said, this figure was “baseless.” The academics calculated that Gaza’s agriculture likely accounted for no more than 12% of caloric consumption in 2005 and that even if all of Gaza’s 2011 crops were replaced, the number of trucks entering Gaza per capita throughout the war would still be 58% higher than in 2011.
The authors also made a point to “strongly criticize the decision to stop aid to Gaza between March and May 2025,” acknowledging humanitarian concerns even while disputing the genocide narrative.
Questioning Casualty Reporting
Further, the study took direct aim at casualty figures reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (GMoH), alleging systematic data manipulation. According to the researchers, the Health Ministry, “per Hamas directives, categorizes all deaths as civilian ones.”
That, the analysts found, “significantly skewed international reporting,” for there are indications that the ministry’s lists include “age-related natural deaths, particularly of women,” while failing to indicate “combat-aged men.”
This selective reporting, they argued, artificially inflates civilian casualty figures and obscures the actual combatant-to-civilian death ratio. Case in point, the study’s analysis of GMoH reports revealed a fluctuating and often implausible distribution of the number of casualties.
As of March 2025, the GMoH had reported 50,021 combat-related casualties. The study noted that the number of reported widows, at 13,900, almost matched the official excess male mortality figure of 13,964 for ages 18-59, which it found to be “striking.”
MOREOVER, THE authors presented data suggesting that evacuation zones designated by the IDF were “significantly safer” than other areas. According to their partial data analysis, less than 4% of deaths occurred in the Humanitarian section of al-Mawasi and the other central camps, areas marked as evacuation safe zones.
They attributed higher casualties elsewhere to “the failure of the UN to cooperate with the establishment of such zones.”
Systematic Critique of International Reporting
A substantial portion of the study focused on what the authors described as “systematic failures in UN and NGO reporting.” They identified patterns of “circular citation, opaque assessments, and unannounced retroactive corrections” that the researchers said have distorted the international understanding of the conflict.
One example they highlighted involves UNRWA’s truck count discrepancies. While UNRWA initially reported a 70% drop in aid after May 2024 and the Rafah operation, the agency “later retroactively corrected these reports.” Crucially, the authors noted, “this correction was effectively unannounced and hence the supposed aid drop continues to be broadly cited.”
Separately, the study drew parallels to past conflicts, noting a precedent in flawed reporting from the 2008-2009 Gaza War. They cited former UN jurist Richard Goldstone, who led the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and later expressed regret over some of his report’s conclusions.
In a 2011 Washington Post op-ed, Goldstone wrote: “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
The study extended its analysis beyond Gaza as well, examining similar patterns in Iraq during the UN Security Council’s 1990s sanctions regime. Per the authors, claims of hundreds of thousands of child deaths due to sanctions, based on Iraqi government data, were “later revealed to be fabricated by the Iraqi authorities.”
Introducing "Humanitarian Bias"
Introducing a new theoretical concept called “humanitarian bias,” the report used this term to characterize what the authors perceived as systematic errors in conflict reporting.
They defined this as “a tendency among aid organizations to accept alarming claims from stakeholders in order to mobilize urgent action.”
Commensurate with the researchers, this is a bias that creates a feedback loop where “factual corrections are often met with hostility or ignored altogether, undermining accuracy in humanitarian reporting.”
They added that even when myths are definitively disproven, “corrections are rarely incorporated into public or academic understandings.”
An acute example of this theoretical concept, the study continued, can be seen when UN aid chief Tom Fletcher falsely stated in May 2025 that some 14,000 Gazan babies could die within the next 48 hours unless aid reached them.
“[Aid has] not reached the communities [it needs] to reach. This is baby food, baby nutrition. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them,” Fletcher told the BBC.
When pressed on how he came to this figure, he assured the interviewer that the UN had strong teams on the ground formulating these assessments. Two days later, the UN retracted the statement, with officials downplaying the original time frame of the dire situation.
The study also mentioned that humanitarian bias can be particularly damaging when it prevents a realistic assessment of the root causes of conflict and humanitarian crises, such as the actions of non-state actors.
Military Conduct Assessment
While challenging genocide allegations, the study did not provide blanket exoneration of IDF conduct. The authors said that “isolated incidents may point to negligence or localized misconduct and suspicion of individual war crimes.” However, they maintained, “no evidence was found of overarching directives aimed at harming civilians.”
The academics credited the IDF with implementing what they called “Unprecedented steps such as early warnings, precision targeting, and mission aborts to avoid civilian harm,” actions they noted were “costly to the IDF” but “reduced non-combatant casualties.”
A comparison of the IDF’s non-combatant-to-combatant casualty ratio to those of other Western armies fighting urban insurgencies was also provided in the study. Based on this, it was determined that the IDF’s ratio was relatively low.
Implications and Warnings
THE STUDY’S findings stand in stark contrast to various international assessments. The International Court of Justice has adopted provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent genocide, though it did not order an immediate cessation of military operations as South Africa had requested.
Notably, these provisional measures are legally binding on Israel, and there is no right of appeal, though enforcement mechanisms remain limited.
Various UN bodies and humanitarian organizations have made, and continue to make, serious allegations about Israel’s conduct.
Reports have described the Jewish state as using starvation as a weapon of war, with the Gaza Government Media Office claiming that Israel blocked 3,800 aid trucks from entering the territory. Furthermore, UNRWA officials have said that Israel is “deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
In the study, Orbach warned of the broader implications for international humanitarian law, saying, “If every severe urban war were defined as genocide, it would ultimately dilute the legal and moral power of the term.”
To avoid humanitarian bias, the study proposed a framework that prioritizes cross-referencing multiple sources, systematic scrutiny, transparency, and resistance to political and media-driven narratives.
While “the suffering of civilians in Gaza is both tragic and undeniable,” the researchers said, humanitarian discourse must remain “anchored in verifiable facts” to prevent the risk of future atrocities being overlooked.