RACHEL HAS MILLIONS OF FOLLOWERS.
THEY DESERVE THE TRUTH.
Millions of parents and followers trust Ms. Rachel. With that trust comes responsibility.
When she shares claims about starving children in Gaza, the evidence deserves as much attention as the images.
Compassion matters. So does accuracy.
THE DEVASTATING IMAGES DON’T TELL THE REAL STORY.
Images of a few dozen severely malnourished children were circulated around the world as evidence of starvation in Gaza, but they omitted significant context.
As reported by The Free Press, images circulated by Ms. Rachel and others omitted critical information about the children’s underlying health conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, rickets and immune disorders.
Those children’s suffering was real. Sharing their images without medical context misled audiences.
THE CASE OF MARYAM DAWAS
One clear example of this deception.
In 2025, the Los Angeles Times described Maryam Dawas’s condition this way: “Doctors confirmed that her condition is solely the result of hunger and malnutrition.”
Her family’s subsequent fundraising campaign disclosed: “Maryam has a serious immune disorder that attacks her body every day, leaving her weak and vulnerable.”
Ms Rachel’s audience deserved that information.
MS. RACHEL’S RESPONSE? “WHY DOES THAT EVEN MATTER?”
It matters.
A serious underlying medical condition can affect a child’s weight, appearance and nutritional vulnerability.
It matters when an image is presented to millions of people as evidence of population-wide starvation.
And it matters when those images contribute to accusations against Israel that reverberate around the world.
MS. RACHEL TALKS ABOUT STARVATION. HER AUDIENCE DESERVES THE ACTUAL DATA.
A UNICEF-led team published its latest comprehensive nutrition analysis of Gaza in July 2026.
Using weight-for-height measurements, researchers found acute malnutrition in just 0.5% of the children surveyed.
The survey also found stunting in about 12% of children surveyed.
That is less than the Middle East and North Africa’s 15% to 26% stunting rate, according to the latest report on child malnutrition by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL UNICEF FOUND
The UNICEF-led team’s presentation also revealed that Gaza now faces a new challenge: obesity and excess weight.
A leading researcher who has overseen teams collecting malnutrition data in the Horn of Africa remarked that she had “never seen” the emergence of obesity and excess weight in a place that was declared only a year earlier to be suffering from “famine.”
These findings paint a considerably more complicated picture than the one presented by Ms. Rachel and by the viral images.
THE WAY MALNUTRITION WAS MEASURED DURING THE WAR, WAS MISLEADING.
During the war, researchers said they had repeatedly been unable to collect weight-for-height data because of the conflict.
That meant assessments relied on the often inaccurate mid-upper-arm circumference, or MUAC, measurements.
Those arm measurements identified more than twice as many cases than there actually were.
Yannay Spitzer, an applied economist in Boston, told The Free Press that the survey results show that the IPC’s famine declaration rested on an erroneous assumption that undermines its validity.
“It’s just another example of how flawed the methodology was.”
THE FAMINE THAT NEVER WAS
The famine narrative originated with reports from the IPC, a UN-aligned body working closely with several anti-Israel NGOs.
In March 2024, it predicted that Gaza would enter famine within four months, claiming that 39% of the population faced emergency-level food insecurity and another 30% had already reached catastrophic—or famine—levels.
Those claims were later rejected by the IPC’s own Famine Review Committee (FRC), an independent body tasked with evaluating IPC findings. In a June review, the FRC concluded it was “not plausible” that Gaza had entered famine.
Ms. Rachel never mentions any of this.
FAMINE HAS DEFINED CRITERIA.
There are three conditions that must be met for a food crisis to qualify as famine.
One of those requirements is that the death rate per day exceeds 2 deaths per 10,000 people overall or 4 deaths per 10,000 children under five.
In Gaza, that would have required the number of deaths due to famine reaching 440 people or 134 children under five, per day.
Nothing remotely approaching that occurred.
In September 2025, Al Jazeera reported a total of 361 malnutrition deaths over two years of war.
But the vast majority suffered from severe underlying health conditions.
MS. RACHEL AND THE IPC RELIED ON HAMAS
The IPC relied on Hamas-provided data that failed to account for private-sector food entering Gaza, ignored locally sourced food, and grossly overestimated the number of people located in areas it labeled at risk of famine.
For instance, the IPC again warned of famine conditions in parts of Gaza in August 2025 — claims that once more failed to materialize.
An October 2025 report by the Global Nutrition Cluster, which coordinates emergency nutrition responses, found that the malnutrition figures in Gaza were 23% lower than those used by the IPC.
This discrepancy stemmed from data manipulation, meaning the IPC’s own threshold for famine was not met.
MS. RACHEL WANTS HER AUDIENCE TO “SPEAK THE TRUTH.”
THAT STANDARD APPLIES TO HER, TOO.
The war in Gaza has caused tremendous suffering.
The public deserves more than viral photographs stripped of context and sweeping claims presented without scrutiny.
Every child deserves compassion.
Every humanitarian claim demands accuracy.
And an audience of millions deserves the full story.
