'Deliberate and misleading': Israeli defense report refutes Hamas's claims of Gaza starvation
Israel refuted the claims of starvation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, stating that Hamas was behind 'deliberate and misleading' publication of data, in a report published on Tuesday by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the IDF unit responsible for civilian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank.
According to COGAT, Hamas portrays Gazan patients with severe pre-existing conditions as having died from malnutrition, saying that this was part of a coordinated campaign by Hamas 'to discredit the State of Israel and achieve political gains.'
COGAT's review reportedly found a gap between the deaths attributed to malnutrition as reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, and the cases documented and published with details in media and social media.
Since early July, the report said that there had been an increase in the number of reported malnutrition deaths reported by the ministry. Until this June, 66 such deaths had been reported from the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War, and in July alone, more than 133 deaths were noted.
Israeli report alleges deaths due to pre-existing medical conditions, health deterioration
COGAT's review said that the Gaza Health Ministry did not release the names of these deceased, as it had traditionally done in the past. For example, on July 19, Hamas announced 18 malnutrition-related deaths, and on July 22, another 15, but COGAT's probe identified only a handful of cases, adding that this raises doubt about their credibility.
The ministry said on Tuesday that over the past 24 hours, five people, including two children, died of starvation and malnutrition.
The review added that following a case-by-case analysis of the published deaths, most of those allegedly dying from malnutrition had pre-existing medical conditions that led to the deterioration of their health, unrelated to nutritional status.
COGAT also reported that some individuals had received medical treatments in Israel prior to the outbreak of the war, saying that the documented cases don't represent the condition of the general population in Gaza and present only extreme cases involving pre-existing illnesses.
The report pointed to images circulated online of four-year-old Abdullah Hani Muhammad Abu Zarqa, with media claiming that his condition was due to hunger in Gaza. COGAT stated that following an investigation, they found that the young boy suffers from a genetic disease causing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, osteoporosis, and bone thinning, a condition affecting other family members.
Prior to the war, Zarqa traveled with his mother to an east Jerusalem hospital to receive medical treatment.
NGO the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in response, 'Anyone who reads the report is liable to think that the IDF entered the enclave, analyzed the status of the population - which has been denied comprehensive humanitarian aid for months now - and that then a set system was created to dispel the hunger,' most likely referring to the American-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its food distribution sites.
Reports from the ground alleged that many experienced chaos at those sites, and that the IDF has, at several points, shot at the crowds to restore order.
'This is not the case,' ACRI noted, adding, 'obviously, the system failed.'
It explained that the points attempted to be proved by the report - that some of the individuals who Hamas claimed died from malnutrition had previous health complications- were all worsened by hunger, 'so as to bring them to the point of death.'
'In the Gaza Strip, dangers related to malnutrition could have something to do with the extreme poverty and physical weakness that make it impossible to find food in some areas... Many wouldn't have died if they had access to food,' it said.
'This is what it means to experience hunger: First, the weakest die - people with background health conditions and newborns who aren't nursing because their mothers are starving, pregnant women, children, elderly, and the injured. If these population groups had received food, they wouldn't be on a death list,' said ACRI.
'Rather than publish reports, the military should stop the fighting, remove the barriers to medical care, and begin to assess the true state of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.'
Sarah Ben-Nun and Reuters contributed to this report.
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