The Embassy of Israel in Washington’s May 2026 report, Manufacturing a Modern Blood Libel, argues that allegations of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and starvation against Israel during the Gaza war were not grounded in reliable evidence, but emerged from a politically driven campaign that relied on Hamas-generated data, distorted humanitarian reporting, misleading imagery, and the amplification of anti-Israel narratives by international institutions, media outlets, NGOs, and academics.
The following is an executive summary of the report. For the full report, click here.
The report frames the accusations against Israel after October 7 as a modern version of the anti-Semitic blood libel. It begins with Hamas’s massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis and abduction of 251 hostages, arguing that Israel’s military response was a war of self-defense that critics quickly recast as genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing.
On genocide, the report argues that the charge relies heavily on unreliable Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health data. It says those figures conflate civilians and combatants, include natural deaths, omit Hamas fighters, and show statistical anomalies that suggest manipulation. It also argues that Israel’s combatant-to-noncombatant casualty ratio was unusually low for modern urban warfare.
The report emphasizes Israel’s civilian-protection measures, including warning texts, phone calls, leaflets, evacuation corridors, humanitarian zones, and roof-knocking warnings. It presents these actions as evidence that Israel sought to reduce civilian casualties rather than target civilians as a group.
On starvation, the report claims that approximately 2.2 million tons of aid entered Gaza between October 2023 and October 2025, including nearly 1.7 million tons of food. It also accuses the UN of misreporting aid flows and Hamas of diverting large quantities of aid for revenue and operational purposes.
The report concludes that the accusations of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and deliberate starvation were manufactured through Hamas propaganda, institutional amplification, media failures, decontextualized imagery, and academic or NGO narratives, rather than through a factual assessment of Israel’s conduct in the war.
Source: “Manufacturing a Modern Blood Libel: Genocide, Starvation, and the Language of Dehumanization,” Embassy of Israel in Washington, (May 2026).