In the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, Israel faces serious accusations regarding its conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip. This article addresses four key accusations leveled against Israel, presenting meticulously researched facts and contextualizing cause and effect. The accusations include that Israel is perpetrating apartheid, famine, and genocide. We also aim to provide an assessment of the number of victims.
By Josias Terschüren and Matthias Messerle
apartheid
The accusation that Israel has imposed a system of apartheid on the Palestinian people is a powerful weapon of the political left, which equates the situation in the Palestinian territories with the historical oppression of the Black population of South Africa, thereby trivializing and justifying terrorism as legitimate resistance against Israel. This accusation must first be examined closely, differentiating between two areas. Apartheid does not exist in Israel itself. Arab Israelis (approximately 20 percent of the population) can move freely within Israel, participate in elections, and hold high-ranking positions in politics, the judiciary, and all other sectors of society. A glance at the Jerusalem tram or any Israeli hospital is enough to refute the apartheid accusation; Jews, Arabs, Christians, and Druze, whites, browns, and blacks sit and work side by side.
Intellectuals and politicians such as Jimmy Carter, Achille Mbembe, Desmond Tutu, and Judith Butler, as well as organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, saw and continue to see characteristics of an apartheid regime in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). This accusation is based on the discrimination against the resident Palestinian population in favor of Israeli settlers. However, the use of the term apartheid is controversial for good reason, as many of the Israeli measures (such as the construction of barriers, checkpoints, and walls, as well as segregated roads) served and continue to serve the purpose of preventing terrorist attacks—such as those that occurred during the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005). This security policy aspect, and thus the principle of cause and effect, is conveniently ignored by proponents of the apartheid thesis.
That Israeli national law applies to the Israeli population in Judea and Samaria is understandable and logical. Conversely, Israeli law could only apply to the Palestinians there if they also became Israeli citizens. Extending the Israeli Basic Law to Judea and Samaria would result in their incorporation into Israeli territory, an outcome that the propagandists of the apartheid lie are unlikely to desire. At the same time, this step would mean the demographic and democratic elimination of Israel as a Jewish state through the naturalization of approximately 2.5 million Palestinians. This fact makes the current legal framework a temporary necessity. It is the least bad solution—pragmatic, one might say. Moreover, there is the possibility of appealing to Israeli courts in the event of legal disputes. There are many cases in which decisions have been made in favor of the Palestinians—here, too, there is no discrimination. The dual legal system currently in place in Judea and Samaria is mainly due to historical developments and Israel's legitimate security interests, and is not an expression of a deliberate apartheid policy.
famine
The accusation that Israel is letting the population in the Gaza Strip starve or is deliberately starving them has recently been raised by some UN aid agencies and institutions and has been widely disseminated in the media worldwide.
The accusation, raised by South Africa before the International Criminal Court on November 17, 2023, that Israel is deliberately using hunger as a weapon, is completely unfounded. Israel has been ensuring and managing the supply of food to a hostile population since the beginning of the war. This accusation, leveled solely against Israel, also completely ignores the fact that Egypt shares a border with Gaza. If there were indeed a famine in Gaza, Egypt would be just as responsible and liable to prosecution as Israel.
Although Israeli aid deliveries were paused later in the war, from March to May 19, 2025, after Hamas refused to extend the ceasefire and release half of the hostages, Israel had previously allowed enough aid supplies to cover the entire Gaza Strip for six months, as evidenced by warehouses later looted and filled with food and goods confiscated by Hamas.
The UN has an established mechanism for warning of and declaring famines. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), data on food security is collected, analyzed, and categorized into five levels (from 1 – minimal or no famine – to 5 – famine/disaster). Before a famine is declared, an expert panel from the Famine Review Committee (FRC) must convene, review the data, and then make a decision. In such a case, a death rate of approximately two starvation deaths per 10,000 inhabitants per day is assumed. On August 22, 2025, the FRC declared a Level 5 famine in Gaza for the first time in the history of the Middle East. Due to intense criticism of the methodology, the FRC was even forced to publish an addendum to the declaration, but the criticism continued. Author and Middle East expert Salo Aizenberg published a calculationaccording to which there should have been approximately 10,000 deaths in the period between the IPC/FRC classification and the ceasefire on October 9th. In reality, however, even the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, which Hamas falsified to its advantage, show only 192 deaths from starvation during this period. This number is tragic, no doubt, but it is not an indication of a deliberately engineered famine. On the contrary, it proves that there is no famine in Gaza, as statistically speaking, it falls 98% short of the death toll that would be expected in such a case.
Israel vehemently denied the claim of famine in Gaza, with the Foreign Ministry stating: “The IPC/FRC declared a famine despite evidence to the contrary and adjusted both its data and methodology to support this conclusion. This is not to downplay the very real hardships faced by the civilian population in Gaza. Israel is making immense efforts to alleviate these hardships, paying a heavy price in the form of restrictions on its operations and providing financial and material resources to a criminal adversary who profits from the diversion and sale of aid.”
According to COGAT, the Israeli authority for the Palestinian territories, a total of approximately 2.2 million tons of aid have been delivered to the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war, transported by 111,540 trucks. (As of November 2025) This figure includes all deliveries from Israel, UN aid agencies, and private organizations.
Regarding aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip, there are differing data sets and figures from Israeli authorities and UN agencies (such as OCHA), which sometimes diverge significantly. The UN did not include some deliveries from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and COGAT in its figures. The GHF alone has distributed more than 185 million meals since May 2025. The UN statistics therefore paint a misleading picture of the overall situation.
In its statement of August 22, 2025, COGAT criticizes the report: “The classification as a famine is based on an unpublished telephone survey and questionable assessments by UNRWA, a UN agency whose staff are known to be deeply embedded in Hamas, as well as local NGOs, while wildly speculating about mortality rates that even the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health does not report. The report also relies heavily on other UN data known to be incomplete, biased, and to include non-public internal documents, many of which come from sources connected to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip. This makes independent verification of claims such as thousands of malnourished children and recent deaths due to hunger impossible. The fact that the IPC relies heavily on United Nations data and does not incorporate data from COGAT, the Israeli body coordinating humanitarian efforts, into its investigation constitutes a serious breach of trust.” This represents a further serious methodological flaw that undermines the credibility and integrity of the results.”
Analysis of food aid delivered by truck to the Gaza Strip, according to COGAT, revealed that since the beginning of August 2025, 4,400 calories per person per day have been arriving in Gaza. This is far more than the 2,500 calories a grown man needs per day; women and children need less. This refutes the accusation that Israel pursues a policy or strategy of starvation.
Adding to the already difficult data situation in the heart of a war zone, from which Hamas conducts effective propaganda and prevents free reporting, are media reports that uncritically reproduce Hamas's figures, images, and narratives. For example, some leading media outlets published pictures of seemingly starving toddlers and teenagers (such as the New York Times and Stern), who were in fact already suffering from serious illnesses or genetic defects. The images and accompanying texts suggested that the Israeli military operation was responsible for the suffering of these children. Again, facts—in this case, in the form of images—were used in a misleading way to damage Israel's reputation, as reported by, among others, the Middle East think tank mena-watch .
genocide
On December 29, 2023, South Africa filed a genocide lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The Israeli Foreign Ministry categorically rejected this accusation. Certainly, there were politicians in Israel who, in the shock of the terrorist massacre of October 7, 2023, made genocidal statements (such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Nissim Vaturi). However, these statements were contradicted by official Israeli sources. At no time did they reflect military doctrine or orders. The specifically genocidal intent (Latin: dolus specialis) attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government is artificially constructed and baseless.
Unlike actual genocides in history (such as the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916 or the Holocaust), Israel's military intervention had a specific cause: the genocidal massacre perpetrated by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in approximately 1,200 deaths, 5,000 injuries, and 250 hostage-takings. This fundamental difference between the tragic events in the Gaza Strip and genocides committed for religious or racist motives is evident from the outset.
The military action taken by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the Gaza Strip in response to this, as part of their defense, also demonstrates that the accusation of genocide is false. There is a war in Gaza, but no arbitrary killing of Palestinians is taking place. Military experts from other militaries confirm this, such as Captain Richard Kemp of the British Army and Major John Spencer, head of the Urban Warfare Institute at the West Point Military Academy, who has gained firsthand experience on the ground.
“Since October 7, I have been to Gaza four times, embedded with the Israeli armed forces. I have interviewed the Israeli Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces, the leadership of the Southern Command, and dozens of commanders and soldiers on the front lines. I have reviewed their orders, observed their target selection process, and seen soldiers take real risks to avoid harming civilians. Nothing I have seen or investigated resembles genocide or genocidal intent.”
The Israeli army makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties: it regularly warns the civilian population in the Gaza Strip of military operations via leaflets, phone calls, and radio broadcasts, and has established a web-based system for Palestinians to identify and avoid combat zones, showing where fighting is currently taking place in Gaza. Humanitarian corridors have also been established to facilitate escape from these active war zones. All of this contradicts the claim of genocide by the Israeli armed forces. A separate article on casualty figures can be found here.
A comprehensive assessment of the situation must also consider that many of Hamas's military installations are located in and beneath civilian structures in the Gaza Strip. This means that during Israeli military operations, there is always a risk that Palestinians (used as human shields by Hamas) will be harmed. Sacrificing their own civilian population is part of the terrorists' perfidious war strategy. Furthermore, Hamas also uses teenagers as fighters and children as auxiliaries. While this terrorist organization deliberately attacks and kills Israeli civilians, the IDF's operations are focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and securing the release of the remaining hostages (which took place on October 13, 2025). As of November 21, 2025, three bodies of Israeli hostages remain in Hamas's hands.
Even pure logic contradicts the genocide thesis. Given the enormous capabilities and firepower of the Israeli Air Force, as demonstrated, for example, in the Twelve-Day War with Iran, one must ask why the Israeli army is risking the lives of its own soldiers in a ground offensive. If Israel truly intended to commit genocide, it would be far easier to accomplish this through widespread airstrikes without the deployment of ground troops. In Gaza, however, the air force operates almost exclusively with smart bombs. Israel is paying a heavy price in blood for its decision to fight surgically and exclusively against Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip. Nearly 1,000 Israeli soldiers have lost their lives in this conflict so far.
casualty figures
There are no independent authorities in the Gaza Strip. Hamas also controls the communication of death figures from Gaza, as these are an essential component of its propaganda efforts. Two "authorities" in Gaza communicate casualty figures to the outside world: the Ministry of Health (GM) and the Government Media Office (GMO). Gabriel Epstein of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an extremely detailed analysis of the figures reported from Gaza, comes to the following conclusion:
"The claims made by two institutions in Gaza, the Government Media Office (GMO) and the Ministry of Health, remain completely incompatible. In particular, the GMO has been publishing false and unsubstantiated figures for over a year, figures on which no credible news agency, government, or organization should rely."
In the following, we will focus exclusively on the figures from the Ministry of Health. The fact that many newspapers and television stations regularly point out that the death toll from the Gaza Strip cannot be independently verified demonstrates the complexity of this issue. The Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera reports 65,344 deaths. At the same time (as of September 2025), the German news program Tagesschau reported 64,000 deaths, but explicitly cited figures from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip.
However, these details are facing increasing criticism, which concerns the following points:
- The ratio of women, children and men among the dead
- The ratio of combatants to civilians among those killed
- The methodology for data collection
- Fake ID numbers and natural deaths
Abraham Wyner, a data scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, calls the Health Department's figures for March 2024 "statistically impossible." Wyner deduces from the reported data the Hamas-controlled department used to arrive at its figures: "Most likely, the Hamas department arbitrarily set a daily total death toll. We know this because the daily totals rise too consistently to be real. Then they allocated about 70% of the total to women and children and randomly divided this amount from day to day. They then added the number of men according to the predetermined total. This explains all the observed data."
When this Hamas deception was exposed, the news seems to have reached Gaza as well, because Epstein demonstrates that just one month later, in April 2024, the health authority began retrospectively revising its figures without communicating this. A classic cover-up. The exposure of the bluff and the revision of the health authority's data also meant that the UN had to correct its figures as well. It had reported twice the number of women and children killed! The timing and correlation of the corrected figures are as astonishing as they are revealing, as they expose the entire Hamas PR mechanism that, until then, had fueled the world's critical reporting on Israel undisturbed: Hamas published at least fabricated, perhaps even entirely fictitious, figures, which were adopted by the UN and then disseminated and sold by the press as official UN figures. What a farce! In fact, according to Epstein's analysis of GM data, almost 50% of all deaths in the Gaza Strip are men of fighting age. He shows that: "Adult men are overrepresented in the number of deaths (49.3%) relative to their share of the population (26%), with men aged 18 to 45 dying 2.85 times more often than women. While men generally die more often than women in times of war, this imbalance undoubtedly reflects the significant presence of combatants in the statistics."
Another point of criticism raised here is that the reported figures do not distinguish between combatants, i.e., Hamas terrorists, and civilians, meaning ordinary Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This distinction is essential for a serious assessment of what is happening in Gaza, because Israel legitimately wants to kill the terrorists, but not the civilians. The diplomatic and political pressure on Israel is directly proportional to the death toll in Gaza. The anonymous inclusion of killed terrorists in the overall death toll means that military successes have the opposite diplomatic impact on Israel.
Furthermore, the GM included deaths from natural causes such as illness and old age in its overall figures, and not every entry in the statistics was verified by a physical body. Deaths reported by relatives or assumed based on media reports were also included. This methodology is highly susceptible to manipulation and error. Epstein revealed for the first time that Hamas also used forged identity documents to identify the deceased; at its peak, 2,200 entries (almost 9% of the total) were based on forged documents! It is also scandalous that even deaths caused by stray rockets or executions carried out by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were included in the official statistics, such as the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, 2023, which reportedly killed 470 people.
Based on the death toll in Gaza, statements are often made about the proportionality of Israeli actions. However, proportionality in a military sense differs from the everyday use of the term. In military planning, the objective of the operation, the potential risks, and the relationship between the achievable military advantage and the expected damage to civilian life, limb, and infrastructure must first be weighed against each other. If proportionality can be assumed as a result, the military strike is authorized. Only afterward can a final judgment on proportionality or disproportionality be made—and only in one way: by comparing the planning of the military strike with the outcome after its execution. It is highly doubtful that those who accuse Israel of disproportionate action have any insight into Israeli military planning. Their judgment, therefore, cannot be well-founded. Joint evaluations between militaries, in which allied military forces, such as the US military, gain insights into the planning and execution of Israeli military operations, are conducted regularly. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Martin E. Dempsey, for example, concluded: “I can say with confidence that Israel acted responsibly.” John Spencer, Director of the Urban Warfare Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is also convinced: “In any comparable context, the ratio of civilians to combatants in Israel is still historically low, given the precautions taken. Israel has done more and implemented more measures to prevent harm to civilians than any other army in the history of urban warfare.” The guiding principle of any legitimate warfare must be the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, that is, the protection of civilians. The fact that innocent civilians have been and continue to be victims of war in every conflict throughout human history is as terrible as it is inevitable. Even the Allies in World War II could not win their fight against Nazi Germany without accepting civilian casualties, for example during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. The litmus test for any military action must be – as described above – the proportionality and plausibility of the deployment. Both are present in Gaza.
According to Spencer , the IDF's performance in Gaza, its capabilities and actions are "undoubtedly an expression of a moral, ethical and disciplined military force that has achieved something unique in one of the most complex urban scenarios a military has faced in modern history."
