Key Takeaways:
- The New Yorker’s analysis of the long-term effects of starvation in Gaza is both hypothetical and based on questionable claims that call into question the outlet’s editorial standards.
- The piece engaged in implicit Holocaust inversion and failed to make any mention of the Israeli hostages, who represent real-world examples of starvation in Gaza.
- The one-sided nature of this piece makes it clear that the author was more concerned with vilifying Israel than with providing his audience with a comprehensive analysis.
Earlier this year, HonestReporting called out The New Yorker for publishing several pieces by Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and poet who has compared Israel to the Holocaust, disparaged female Israeli hostages, and cursed out mainstream media organizations.
Now, The New Yorker is at it again, this time publishing a piece that commits Holocaust inversion and ignores the suffering of the Israeli hostages in Gaza.
The piece, by emergency physician Clayton Dalton, posits how those suffering from starvation and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip may suffer long-term effects that could potentially affect them for the rest of their lives.
Dalton relies on questionable contextual information, implicitly drawing a false connection between the Nazis and Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas, and entirely overlooking the relevant case of the Israeli hostages who were held in dire conditions by Hamas and other terror groups throughout the entire two years of the war.
Much of Dalton’s piece is hypothetical, discussing what effects starvation and malnutrition could have on those who are suffering in the Gaza Strip.
However, this hypothetical discussion is based on contextual information that includes several questionable or unsubstantiated claims about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza that are irresponsibly presented as unimpeachable facts.
Some of the issues include:
- The claim that 3,000 Palestinians were killed seeking aid at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. This unsubstantiated number is based on a report that claims 3,000 aid-seekers were killed between January 2024 and September 2025. The vast majority of this time period occurred before the GHF even started operating. As well, this report blames the deaths on Israeli forces, but in many cases of the deaths of aid-seekers, it’s unclear whether Israel or Hamas killed the person. Thus, Dalton relies on a faulty study for context.
- The claim that, according to a Lancet study, 54,000 children in Gaza are malnourished. As noted by analyst Mark Zlochin, this number was provided by UNRWA, which has previously presented data about malnutrition in Gaza that was double the numbers provided by other humanitarian organizations. UNRWA’s manipulation of data casts this current study into doubt and should not be accepted as fact.
- This piece relies on the testimony of John Kahler, one of the founders of the humanitarian organization MedGlobal. However, a quick perusal of both Kahler’s and MedGlobal’s X (formerly Twitter) accounts shows a deep animus toward the Jewish state. This includes Kahler reposting known anti-Israel accounts such as former Human Rights Watch head Ken Roth, Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, and antisemitic UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese. MedGlobal also shared a post accusing Israel of bombing Al-Ahli Hospital in October 2023 and never recanted this false claim.
- Hyperbolic descriptions of the humanitarian situation in Gaza include, for example, quoting a Gazan father who bemoans the fact that his 4-year-old son doesn’t know the names of fruits and vegetables, even though he was two years old when the war began. Most two-year-olds can identify at least a few vegetables and fruits.
Perhaps the most egregious aspect of this piece is Dalton’s implicit connection of Israeli actions to those of the Nazis. To explain what could possibly happen to some of the Palestinians living in Gaza suffering from malnutrition, Dalton refers to several historic studies on the effects of malnutrition and starvation. Two of the three studies that he references were conducted on victims of the Nazis during the Second World War: The Warsaw Ghetto hunger study from 1942 and a study of the Dutch Hunger Winter from 1944.
Dalton is clearly drawing a parallel between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and how the Nazis treated their victims during the Second World War and the Holocaust. This becomes even more explicit considering that there have been more modern studies conducted on those who suffered from malnutrition and starvation during different famines, including the Great Chinese Famine (which is seen as the deadliest famine in modern history) and the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia. Yet, none of these studies are mentioned at all.
This is not to discount the continued value of analyzing the Warsaw Ghetto or Dutch Hunger Winter studies. Still, by focusing on those two (the only studies he uses that are based on actual famines), it is clear that Dalton is performing a form of Holocaust inversion, drawing on the legacy of the Nazis’ barbarity to influence how his readers approach Israeli actions in Gaza.
Ignoring Israeli Hostages
In a piece on the effects of starvation and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, one of the most glaring omissions is any mention of the last living Israeli hostages, who were finally released from Hamas captivity on October 13, 2025.
Why did Dalton not see fit to discuss the hostages’ rehabilitation process? Five of them were suffering from severe malnutrition. Yet there are no citations from the doctors and experts tasked with healing them. Here is a tangible example of actual starvation. Instead of focusing on hypotheticals regarding the treatment of malnourished Palestinians, Dalton could have used the real-world experiences of the hostages and their recovery process as a means of illustrating what starvation can do and how it is treated.
Dalton is only concerned, however, with pursuing a narrative that vilifies Israel. This one-sided approach and lack of nuance pervade the entire piece, depriving its audience of a proper discussion about a relevant and contemporary topic.
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