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You Can’t Undo a Libel: American Doctors Quietly Retract ‘60,000 Dead From Starvation’ Gaza Lie
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
The Gaza death toll is “already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” and “everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both — including every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage.”
These are just a few of the wildly exaggerated and demonstrably false claims made in an open letter signed by 99 American physicians, surgeons, and nurses who purport to have volunteered in Gaza since the Hamas massacre last year.
Curiously, the authors felt the need to add a caveat when discussing Israeli hostages — “probably sick.” Apparently, while they are absolutely certain that every one of Gaza’s two million residents is on death’s door, the hostages who have been starved, tortured, and held underground for a year — well, they probably are not doing well.
If one needed a clue as to how flimsy the claims in this letter are, you need only revisit an earlier version of the same letter published in July by many of the same signees.
In that original letter, these trustworthy medical professionals warned that more than 60,000 people had died of starvation in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
Claiming that Israel instituted a “deliberate policy” of starving Gaza that was supposedly “not in dispute,” the signees cited a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) as their evidence.
Yet, the IPC had already revised its earlier warning, finding no evidence of famine in Gaza. Naturally, it’s the earlier warning — the one the IPC itself said was wrong — that the authors chose to cite.
But in the latest version of the letter, the 60,000 dead from starvation have apparently vanished.
Instead, we now have vague claims of “widespread malnutrition.”
The sources these medical professionals use in both letters to conjure up their wild figures are easy to debunk.
For example, they cite The Lancet as an authority, touting it as the “most prestigious medical and public health journal in the world.” They conveniently omit that the staggering figure of 186,000 deaths they reference didn’t come from peer-reviewed data or even a study — it was lifted from an opinion piece published in The Lancet’s “correspondence” section. Hardly the rigorous science you’d expect from such a distinguished source.
In addition to the use of wildly inaccurate figures pulled from wholly dubious sources, the letter is sprinkled with a generous dose of modern-day blood libels, such as the vile lie that Israel is deliberately targeting women and children, describing the “unbearable cruelty” inflicted on them, with women “shredded by [American] bombs” and children “murdered.”
It’s the attached appendix, however, that truly reveals the absurdity of these missives — it’s a mishmash of outdated reports from groups like Save the Children and Human Rights Watch, littered with contradictory statistics and cherry-picked quotes from US politicians.
In the latest letter, we’re told at least 118,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7 — yet this is the exact same figure given in the previous letter months ago. And then they admitted it was “impossible to accurately estimate how many Palestinians in Gaza have died since October 7.”
Meanwhile, one of the signatories, Ali Elaydi, has been making the rounds in the media this week, most recently in an interview with ABC News, where he falsely claimed that Israel is restricting medical supplies from entering Gaza.
In reality, Israel has explicitly stated that it places no such restrictions on medical aid.
The allegation, which originated at the UN, appears to be an attempt to deflect from the UN’s own failures in effectively distributing aid throughout the Strip.
And then there’s the irony: shortly after urging President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the State of Israel … until good faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict,” the signees admit they don’t “claim to have all the answers” because, well, they’re “simply physicians and nurses.”
The sheer arrogance is breathtaking — demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza while simultaneously insisting the conflict continues solely because of US weapons support, and in the next breath confessing they have no idea how to resolve the conflict.
But still, Biden and Harris must “end this madness now!”
One wonders how many of these signatories have lent their names to letters demanding an end to the “madness” of the endless rocket and terror attacks on Israeli civilians — attacks that both preceded October 7 and have continued ever since.
As sure as night follows day, gullible journalists will inevitably reference this inflated and erroneous death toll in future articles.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post You Can’t Undo a Libel: American Doctors Quietly Retract ‘60,000 Dead From Starvation’ Gaza Lie first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire

Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote. The three countries circulated the draft text, said diplomats, and asked members to share their comments by Monday evening. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The US is likely to oppose the draft resolution, seen by Reuters, which also condemns attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities. The text does not name the United States or Israel.
“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States marks a perilous turn in a region that is already reeling,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Sunday. “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear program,” Guterres said.
The world awaited Iran’s response on Sunday after President Donald Trump said the US had “obliterated” Tehran’s key nuclear sites, joining Israel in the biggest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that while craters were visible at Iran’s enrichment site buried into a mountain at Fordow, “no one – including the IAEA – is in a position to assess the underground damage.”
Grossi said entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material appear to have been hit at Iran’s sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex, while the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz has been struck again.
“Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,” said Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran requested the U.N. Security Council meeting, calling on the 15-member body “to address this blatant and unlawful act of aggression, to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Israel‘s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement on Sunday that the U.S. and Israel “do not deserve any condemnation, but rather an expression of appreciation and gratitude for making the world a safer place.”
Danon told reporters before the council meeting that it was still early when it came to assessing the impact of the U.S. strikes. When asked if Israel was pursuing regime change in Iran, Danon said: “That’s for the Iranian people to decide, not for us.”
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Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting

FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israel has rejected a European Union report saying it may be breaching human rights obligations in Gaza and the West Bank as a “moral and methodological failure,” according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
The note, sent to EU officials ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said the report by the bloc’s diplomatic service failed to consider Israel’s challenges and was based on inaccurate information.
“The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel rejects the document … and finds it to be a complete moral and methodological failure,” the note said, adding that it should be dismissed entirely.
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Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’

FILE PHOTO: Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo
Pope Leo on Sunday said the international community must strive to avoid war that risks opening an “irreparable abyss,” and that diplomacy should take the place of conflict.
US forces struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites overnight, joining an Israeli assault in a major new escalation of conflict in the Middle East as Tehran vowed to defend itself.
“Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” Pope Leo said during his weekly prayer with pilgrims.
“No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, the stolen future. Let diplomacy silence the weapons, let nations chart their future with peace efforts, not with violence and bloody conflicts,” he added.
“In this dramatic scenario, which includes Israel and Palestine, the daily suffering of the population, especially in Gaza and other territories, risks being forgotten, where the need for adequate humanitarian support is becoming increasingly urgent,” Pope Leo said.
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