The World Peace Foundation’s Propaganda War

Throughout recorded history, nations and peoples have waged war against each other. In response, prophets and idealists have decried the destruction and prayed for peace, generally with meager results. After the devastation of two World Wars in the 20th century, a number of academic programs were established with the proclaimed mission of reversing this dismal history. 

Unfortunately, as is clear from the state of the world today, they have made little progress. And in some cases, groups operating under the banner of promoting peace have become partisans to conflicts and joined in amplifying hatreds between peoples.

The World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University is a depressing illustration of Orwellian hypocrisy and doublethink. Established by Edwin Ginn, a Boston-based publisher of educational texts and an advocate for international peace, the WPF’s stated objectives are to educate “a global audience” on “the waste and destructiveness of war and of preparation for war,” and, based on “justice-informed research,” to promote “international justice and the brotherhood of man … peace and goodwill among all mankind.” But like other well-intentioned frameworks, the declared objectives must be measured against the results, and here, the chasm is massive. 

This is clearly illustrated in the roles of the WPF and its head, Alex de Waal, in joining the intense propaganda war accompanying the Gaza conflict that began on Oct. 7 with the Hamas mass attacks, atrocities and hostage-taking. In a series of publications and interviews, de Waal amplified the accusations that Israel was deliberately using starvation as a weapon against Palestinians in Gaza. Following an orchestrated campaign, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he had requested arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant for “war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the first of which was “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Violent campus activists repeated the accusations as they attacked and intimidated Jewish students.   

However, as the evidence was carefully examined, it became clear that there was and is no famine or food shortage in Gaza. Despite the ongoing attacks by Hamas and the devastating torture and point-blank murder of hostages, Israel has maintained a steady flow of vital supplies. Nevertheless, and predictably given the deeply ingrained bias, the accusations continue to be pressed in the ICC, by NGOs and in other venues. 

De Waal’s contributions included two articles with this theme in the Guardian (UK). The first, in January 2024, declared, “Unless Israel changes course, it could be legally culpable for mass starvation.” The second, in March 2024, proclaimed, “We are about to witness in Gaza the most intense famine since the Second World War.”  In a July 2024 interview for the Iranian regime’s propaganda television platform Press TV, he declared that “The starvation of Gaza is man-made. It is a crime — certainly a war crime, possibly the crime of extermination, possibly the crime of genocide.” De Waal also participated in an event headlined “Starvation as a Weapon: Predicted Health Outcomes for Mothers and Children in Gaza,” held by Jewish Voice for Peace, a notorious agit-prop NGO.

In a highly inflammatory opinion piece under the heading “Famine in Gaza: an example of the global humanitarian crisis” in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) (June 2024), de Waal repeated the accusations, sourced to the Hamas-controlled Gaza “Health Ministry,” U.N. agencies that automatically recycle these claims, and reports of the Famine Review Committee. Although often described as neutral experts, the FRC also had no independent evidence and cited the same sources, as well as NGOs linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror organization. 

De Waal’s diatribe also erased the responsibility of Hamas and its supporters: the 17-year reign of terror and the horrifying Oct. 7 mass slaughter, brutality, and rape are reduced to a brief reference to the “Hamas attack on Israel and massacre.” After the AJCN published a detailed rebuttal documenting these failures (written by an academic colleague and myself), de Waal doubled down with more blatantly false or unverifiable accusations.  He dismissed details showing that Israeli facilitation of aid was more than adequate, and included a tendentious tag-line: “Many Israelis are upset that the Government of Israel is being accused of creating famine in Gaza. But the facts speak for themselves.” (I flagged this, and the AJCN editors removed it.) 

The use of the academic and “peace” banners at the WPF to promote the opposite is also reflected in the activities and backgrounds of other staff members. Prior to the latest and most deadly Gaza war, at least three (in addition to de Waal) joined in the campaign calling for discriminatory boycotts and arms embargoes against Israel. Vice Chair Anat Biletzki has a long record of providing an Israeli fig-leaf for anti-Israel propaganda, including serving as chair of the B’Tselem NGO that, among other “achievements,” legitimized applying the apartheid label to Israel. In March 2024, Biletzki signed a petition headlined “Genocide is plausible; stop arms to Israel,” and another that called on the US to “stop its unconditional support of Israel’s assault.”  Yael Krifcher, Researcher on Famine and Starvation Crimes, previously worked at Bimkom (another Israeli ideological advocacy NGO) and has actively supported the BDS movement, and B. Arneson’s social media posts demonstrate his political bias, including the declaration that Israel “has separated, contained, imprisoned, tortured, and killed #Palestinians for 75 years.”

As this record demonstrates, WPF is a very visible example of exploiting the façade of peace to fuel conflict and promote false accusations that contribute to hatred and violence. Tufts University and the Fletcher School of Law Diplomacy would be well advised to undertake an immediate, detailed and fully transparent review of WPF’s activities, and to address the question of whether these are consistent with academic norms and standards.

Gerald M. Steinberg is emeritus professor of political science at Bar Ilan University, founder and president of NGO Monitor, and author of “Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process: Between Ideology and Political Realism”