GAZA--IN THE NEWS--FAMINE REPORT "WAS AT BEST, SLOPPY, CARELESS---AND AT WORST, FRAUDULENT AND POLITICIZED"

The Big Story--On Aug. 22, 2025, the United Nations’ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared that famine was underway in Gaza City—a claim that instantly shaped headlines, fueled advocacy campaigns, and even sparked legal action. But the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) wasn’t convinced. On Wednesday, the NCRI dropped a report titled “Starving for the Truth: Fraud, Famine, and the Collapse of Rigor in IPC’s Gaza Declaration.” And the findings? Nothing short of shocking.

The NCRI charged that the IPC’s report was, at best, sloppy and careless—and, at worst, fraudulent and politicized. Its final assessment, sent to The Scroll by an NCRI senior analyst who preferred not to be named, makes no attempt to minimize the report’s damning findings on the IPC’s methods:

The NCRI assesses with high confidence that the United Nations’ famine authority engaged in data fraud by systematically manipulating statistical models, suppressing contradictory evidence, and concealing favorable outcomes associated with U.S.-led aid efforts. This pattern of conduct meets criteria for deliberate data misrepresentation and aligns with institutional incentives to undermine the success of competing American humanitarian initiatives. The cumulative evidence suggests the intent was not scientific accuracy but narrative control.

The IPC’s declaration, then, reads less like a plea for the hungry than a deliberate, calculated act. Whether intended to weaken support for Israel or, more likely, to undermine an aid program that was working, it is clear that the IPC is driven by political motives that trample over truth, indifferent to the lives its distortions affect and the terrible geopolitical ramifications they might yield.

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