An important step in the battle for public opinion: Israel's Embassy in Washington initiated and published overnight a major study refuting claims of alleged hunger in Gaza during the war there. The study was initiated by Israeli Ambassador Dr. Yechiel Leiter after surveys found that even supporters of Israel believed such hunger had taken place.
The document, titled "Manufacturing A Modern Blood Libel: Genocide, Starvation, and the Language of Dehumanization," spans 83 pages. At its core is a description of the manipulative chain activated by Hamas, with the assistance of the UN and the international media, in order to convince global public opinion that there was supposedly starvation and/or genocide in Gaza.
The study is divided into two sections. One analyzes the genocide narrative and the other the starvation claims. It quotes a series of renowned external researchers, among them Prof. Abraham Wyner, a world-renowned expert in statistical learning and data analysis; Gabriel Epstein, a researcher whose visual and demographic analysis formed the basis of the diagram showing the distribution of the dead in Gaza; John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the US Military Academy; thinker and author Douglas Murray; and Matti Friedman, a journalist and former editor at the Associated Press. The study is also based on the findings of two senior military delegations that visited Israel to examine the IDF's performance.
It should be noted that Israel has been trying since the start of the war to refute the smears against it, but this is the first time a full and organized official document addressing them has been published. The study determines that Hamas built an entire military strategy based on maximizing harm to its own civilians as "human shields," while placing responsibility for that harm on Israel.
The international community, the UN, academia and the Western media fell into this propaganda trap, the report states. They relied on Hamas' reports and its narrative without clarifying that the terrorist organization was the source of the information, thereby turning the information the organization disseminated into "established international facts."
The method worked as follows. Stage 1: Hamas produced false or distorted data through the "Health Ministry" and the "government media office." Stage 2: UN agencies, such as OCHA, quoted the figures under the wording "according to the Health Ministry in Gaza," giving them an institutional aura. Stage 3: Foreign media outlets removed the caveat and reported the figures as "UN data."
Another section of the study presents a unique demographic analysis showing a 3:1 ratio between men of fighting age, 18 to 59, who were killed and women of the same ages. This figure, combined with the gap in deaths of boys compared with girls aged 15 to 17, scientifically proves that the IDF operates in a targeted manner against terrorists. This stands in complete contrast to Hamas' claims of random killing of Gazans. The study also mentions the rare occasions on which the UN was forced not to rely on Hamas data. When that happened, the proportion of dead women and children immediately dropped from 69% to 52%.
The study's final conclusion is that the accusations against Israel of genocide and starvation are "a modern incarnation of the antisemitic blood libels of the past, whose purpose today is to deny Israel its right to self-defense and its existence."
Hamas profited by half a billion dollars
Additional troubling findings include a profit of half a billion dollars for Hamas in the midst of the war. This was because the organization managed to take control of up to about 90% of the aid that entered Gaza and sell it to the population. It was also revealed that all the children presented by The New York Times and CNN as "victims of Israeli starvation" were in fact suffering from severe chronic medical conditions, such as cerebral palsy, unrelated to nutrition. Hamas removed the healthy siblings of those children from the photos in order to create a false impression of mass malnutrition.
In addition, the study reveals that in international academia, such as in meetings at the University of Maryland and George Washington University, prominent anti-Israel scholars, including Prof. Omer Bartov and Prof. Adi Ophir, admitted in their own words that the use of the term "genocide" was not legally or factually correct, but that they continued to use it deliberately because of its "rhetorical and political necessity" in applying pressure.
"False accusations encouraged violence"
Leiter, who initiated the drafting of the document, explained what led him to do so. "On Nov. 10, 2025, I met with the editorial board of The New York Times," Leiter said, describing the difficult exchange there.
His conclusion is that "America's newspaper of record clung to the narrative, and nothing would stand in its way. As with classic antisemitism, its current mutation, anti-Zionism, omits facts, logic and truth. False accusations of famine and genocide are not confined to print or the ivory tower, but have encouraged violence in our streets.
"On May 21, 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, our dear Israeli Embassy staffers, were murdered in cold blood at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The attacker was steeped in the modern blood libel. This booklet is not intended for the editors of The New York Times or their colleagues in the media who spread lies about Israel. This document will not have much effect on them. They will continue to manufacture a modern blood libel. This booklet is intended for you, those who have not fallen into the Orwellian trap of inverting language. A close reading of it will restore the words 'genocide,' 'famine' and 'ethnic cleansing' to their true meaning."
