Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once quipped: “If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert.”

While there are established facts no matter who says them, that wisdom has certainly been vindicated in the war that began with Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.

Over the past two years, politicians, academics, journalists, and analysts – people routinely presented as “experts” – have issued dire predictions and sweeping moral judgments about Israel and its enemies. Again and again, they were wrong.

Here are ten examples.

1. The General Who Underestimated the IDF

Soon after October 7, a US three-star Marine lieutenant general assigned to advise Israel warned against a ground invasion, predicting Israel would lose 20 soldiers a day. His projection – over 14,000 fatalities – proved vastly exaggerated. The 918 IDF soldiers killed remain a national tragedy, but the prediction of catastrophic losses was, like many others, baseless.

2. The Hezbollah “Victory” That Never Came

On October 4, 2024, Samer Jaber, a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway University, wrote on Al Jazeera: “Hezbollah has been dealt a heavy blow, but it can still win over Israel.” A year later, Hezbollah has been dismantled as a fighting force, and even Lebanon’s own government now regards it as an enemy.

3. The “World War III” Predictions

When Israel – and later the US – struck Iran in June 2025, media outlets including The Independent and The New York Times warned of “catastrophic consequences” and “the start of World War III.” The Iranian ambassador to France declared such a scenario inevitable. Yet instead of triggering global war, the strikes crippled Iran’s terror network and, in the absence of one of its primary sponsors, forced Hamas to accept a ceasefire.

4. The UN’s “14,000 Babies” Claim

In May 2025, Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, told BBC Radio 4 that “14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.” His words were repeated uncritically by The New York Times, NBC, ABC, TIME, and The Guardian. The prediction never materialized — and was proved to be a manipulation of other statistics — but the damage to Israel’s image did.

5. The Manufactured “Famine”

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini repeatedly warned of an “imminent famine” in Gaza. Yet under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, famine can only be declared if three specific thresholds are crossed: 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, 30 percent of children suffer acute malnutrition, and two or more people per 10,000 die of hunger each day. None of those conditions was met. For Gaza’s population, that would mean over 400 starvation deaths daily – a figure not claimed even by Hamas.

6. The “Genocide Scholars”

Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, declared in The New York Times: “I’m a genocide scholar. I know it when I see it.” He first accused Israel of genocide in December 2024 — months before the war’s end.

Yet Gaza’s population rose throughout the conflict as Israel consistently evacuated civilians from combat zones. Genocide requires intent to destroy; Israel’s intent was to protect. As HonestReporting board member Salo Aizenberg dryly noted, to become a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, “all you need is a credit card.”

7. The Misread ICJ Ruling

In May 2024, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt any actions in Rafah that could bring about the destruction of the Palestinian people in whole or in part. But major outlets — BBC, CNN, NBC, Newsweek — misreported it as a blanket ban on Israel’s Rafah operation. The IDF proceeded, eliminated Hamas’ last stronghold, and the supposed “violation” never materialized.

8. The “Restrained” Hamas

On the eve of the October 7 attack, Israel’s own National Security Adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, confidently described Hamas as “restrained.” Speaking privately on the afternoon of October 6, he noted that Hamas had stayed out of Israel’s recent clashes with Islamic Jihad and was focused on sending more Gazan workers into Israel. Sixteen hours later, Hamas invaded.

Hanegbi — fired by Prime Minister Netanyahu this week — had also told Maariv in September 2023, “I don’t see our enemies raring to fight, not in Lebanon, not in Gaza, and not in Syria.”

9. Did Hamas Choose Stability Over Jihad?

Historian and former deputy minister Michael Oren wrote after Operation Shield and Arrow in May 2023 that Hamas had “chosen social and financial stability over jihad.” In reality, Hamas’s “restraint” was strategic deception — a prelude to October 7. The calm wasn’t peace; it was preparation.

10. The Prophet of Doom

In May 2025, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman predicted Israel was “preparing to re-invade Gaza” and “advance annexation” in the West Bank. His headline read, “This Israeli Government Is Not Our Ally.” Six months later, President Trump declared the war over. There was no annexation, no mass expulsion — just another failed prophecy from the paper that rarely learns.

The Pattern: Expertise Without Accountability

From generals to journalists, UN officials to academics, the pattern is the same: overconfidence, distortion, and a lack of accountability when “expert” narratives collapse.

Ben-Gurion’s advice still stands: when an expert insists something can’t be done — or invents horrors that never were — it’s time to find another expert.

The author is the Executive Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.