A key international food insecurity monitor retracted a report warning of imminent famine in Israeli-sieged north Gaza after the Biden administration pressured the group to do so, new reporting finds.
Earlier this week, the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) put out a report warning that deaths due to starvation were reaching the threshold of famine in north Gaza, as Israel has blocked nearly all humanitarian aid from entering the region for months now.
The U.S.-funded FEWS NET is supposed to provide unbiased analyses of food insecurity in regions across the world. Other groups, like researchers for the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), have also corroborated findings of imminent famine in north Gaza, if it’s not already happening across all of Gaza; many human rights advocates have noted that official famine declarations often happen belatedly, not until long after conditions have reached catastrophic levels.
But, despite the tranche of evidence showing that FEWS NETS’s finding that Palestinians in north Gaza are experiencing famine-level hunger is accurate, U.S. officials pushed FEWS NET to retract the report, The Associated Press found.
Citing Biden administration officials, the publication said that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) directly asked for a retraction. Earlier this week, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, also put out a statement saying that the data used for the report is “outdated and inaccurate” — though, even if the data were old, it may reflect better conditions than the current record low levels of aid allowed into Gaza by Israeli authorities.
Now, the FEWS NET website says that the report is “under review” and is slated to be re-released next month.
Human rights experts have condemned the Biden administration’s actions — one of countless moves showing total fealty to Israel and its genocidal fervor in Gaza.
“To reject a report on starvation in northern Gaza by appearing to boast about the fact that it has been successfully ethnically cleansed of its native population is just the latest example of Biden administration officials supporting, enabling and excusing Israel’s clear and open campaign of genocide in Gaza,” said the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in a statement.
“The Biden administration quibbling over the number of people desperate for food in Gaza seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking access to virtually all food,” said former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth.
Roth pointed out that the Biden administration likely asked for the suppression of the report in order to help cover up the fact that the U.S. is the top foreign backer of Israel’s starvation campaign and military aggression in Gaza.
Indeed, for months, U.S. agencies and top officials have worked in concert to obfuscate findings, even internal ones, that Israel is blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians — despite the obvious reality on the ground in Gaza reported by a litany of sources.
Earlier this month, the UN reported that food availability in Gaza has reached an all-time low and that the entire aid operation is nearing collapse due to Israel’s blockade, attacks on aid, and allowance and potential funding of gangs that are seizing and looting aid convoys.
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.