August 9, 2026

There’s an important piece of grossly underpublicized information you missed last month. Don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault. No mass media outlet believed it was in the public interest for you to know and worth your attention.

It wasn’t as if the news lacked a credible source or had no relevance to the news of the day. In fact, it would have debunked a falsehood about an allegedly heinous crime, contradicting the basic premise of a story that has held captive the imagination of the general public for three years.

But why change ideological direction? Why be compelled to print a retraction? Why create more reasons to disbelieve the reporting of mainstream media?

This week’s undisclosed shocker: What you have been told, and conditioned to believe, about the starvation of children in Gaza was false from the outset. A nutrition survey, recently released and coordinated by UNICEF, reveals that there has been no malnutrition in Gaza. Indeed, at least with respect to children, it remains at historically low levels.

No more reliable source for such matters exists than UNICEF. It is the arm of the United Nations whose sole mission is to advocate for children’s rights. Among its most important mandate: combatting child malnutrition.

Still skeptical, given the bombardment of blood libels against Israel? The survey, data results and measurement methods were conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO measured weight, height, and mid-upper-arm circumference. Apparently, that’s how acute food scarcity is determined.

Malnutrition among the children of Gaza ranged from 0.2 percent in Khan Younis and Rafah to 0.8 percent in Gaza City—that’s less than 1% across the entire enclave! Those numbers are actually lower than what was recorded before Hamas massacred Israelis on October 7, 2023, which led to the war that almost instantly was redefined as a coordinated campaign to kill and starve Palestinian children.

The children of Gaza were more malnourished when there was no war and Hamas was entirely in charge of feeding its people. During the war, Israel’s supply of humanitarian aid actually increased the calorie count. Yet another example of how Hamas is responsible for Gaza’s suffering, and not Israel.

The children of Gaza were more malnourished when there was no war and Hamas was entirely in charge of feeding its people. During the war, Israel’s supply of humanitarian aid actually increased the calorie count.

This was not a small sample size, either. The survey measured 1.72 million people, or 83 percent of Gaza’s population. We now know that the food supply for the children of Gaza is 30% higher than it is for children in neighboring countries—even when compared to some European nations!

Egyptian children suffer from vastly higher levels of malnutrition at 3.3%; in Iran, 4.3%; and in Jordan, 2.3%.

And beyond the Middle East? There’s less starvation among Gazan children than there is in Germany and Finland.

What in the world are Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem and Emma Stone talking about?

Israel is fighting a defensive war to establish deterrence against terrorists who still openly threaten them with repeat performances of 10/7.  The children of Gaza are being used as human shields, largely with the blessing of their parents (why else would anyone ignore Israel’s warnings to dash over to humanitarian corridors, rather than remain in buildings designated for destruction?). And by all accounts from nongovernmental organizations charged with measuring child welfare, Gaza’s children are not lacking in food.

Perhaps when antisemites are repeatedly screaming “genocide!” and “starvation!” in your face, and the media has no interest in reporting the truth, one can either fall for the lie or have their worst biases confirmed.

Perhaps when antisemites are repeatedly screaming “genocide!” and “starvation!” in your face, and the media has no interest in reporting the truth, one can either fall for the lie or have their worst biases confirmed.

Which raises the question: Why, throughout all recorded history, is it customary, if not outright incumbent, to blame Jews for anything that might go wrong? There is a universal predisposition to believe that the worst possible calamities—the most diabolical plots and dastardly deeds—have been committed by Jews.

The fact that the indictments are preposterous and beyond rational belief matters little. There’s never an impulse to seek another opinion.

“The Jews did it!” has been so omnipresent in history, it’s about time we cut out the middleman and change scapegoats to scape-Jews.

Jews killed Jesus. They unleashed rats that caused the Black Death. All plagues began with Jews poisoning wells. (Jews were dying, too, but why introduce logic and undermine the smear?)  Jews kidnapped Christian children and used their blood to make matzoh—the original blood libel.

Jews insinuated themselves inside host countries, bringing down economies and manipulating markets. It’s right there, explained in the book “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a known forgery and hoax that has riveted and galvanized Jew-haters for over a hundred years.

Jews financed the slave trade. They were slumlords, rendering people homeless. Jews control banks and Hollywood. They cause wars and have wars fought on their behalf alone. Jews were responsible for both capitalism and communism.

No conspiracy theory was ever conceived without a Jewish component. Jack Ruby, a Jew, killed Lee Harvey Oswald. President Nixon blamed Jewish journalists for his downfall. Jewish neoconservatives pushed America into its post-9/11 wars with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even in art, Jews don’t fare well: Fagin corrupts and exploits children in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”; Shylock, the money lender, bleeds Christians of their money, and blood, in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”; Barabas is motivated by greed and out for revenge in Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta”; Isaac of York is no great exemplar of Jewish virtue in Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe.”

Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein have surely not helped the cause of reversing these pernicious stereotypes, either.

When it comes to Israel, preposterous allegations shift into ludicrous speed. The IDF trains dogs to sexually assault and rape Palestinian prisoners. In wartime, they deliberately target women and children. The IDF intentionally fires bullets at the legs of children, so as to maim them. Israel poisons the water supply in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli scientists harvest Palestinian organs!

The picture of an emaciated Palestinian boy— dying of an incurable disease — was featured on the cover of the New York Times as ostensibly a victim of Israeli cruelty. Back in 2000, a 12-year-old boy caught in a crossfire in Gaza was purportedly killed by Israeli bullets, but years later the evidence suggested that the bullets were fired by Hamas.

And the granddaddy of all blood libels: On October 8, 2023, for no reason at all other than its vile Zionist nature, Israel set forth to commit genocide against the Palestinian people, through bombs and mass starvation, without managing to kill terrorists—just women and children.

A people perpetually faced with threats of being driven into the sea and wiped from the map have no other national purpose other than to kill Palestinians—a people who didn’t even exist back when Israel was created.

No benefit of the doubt seems to ever be given to Jews. Mass media publishes casualty counts supplied by Hamas, without its own sourcing or independent verification. No one bothered to ask UNICEF about the alleged food deficiencies among the children in Gaza.

No benefit of the doubt seems to ever be given to Jews. Mass media publishes casualty counts supplied by Hamas, without its own sourcing or independent verification. No one bothered to ask UNICEF about the alleged food deficiencies among the children in Gaza.

But if UNICEF had released its findings two years ago, when the war in Gaza was at its peak, would such unqualified evidence in rebuttal have made front-page, top-of-the hour news?  If it had been reported, would it have mattered to protesters—who, despite being on college campuses, refused to read, and refused to know?

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Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is a contributing writer for White Rose magazine. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”