OP-ED: Carney’s ‘famine’ statement and Canada’s recognition of Palestine

Dotan Rousso writes, "Compromising truth and common sense in the service of any agenda does not strengthen that agenda—it corrodes it."

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By Dotan Rousso

In discussions of Gaza, few claims have been repeated as often as the assertion that people are “starving to death every day.” The numbers presented to the international media typically cite single-digit daily deaths attributed to starvation. At first glance, such figures may appear to support the narrative of an unfolding humanitarian crisis. But once placed against the population baseline of Gaza—roughly 2.2 million people—the data itself collapses under the weight of statistical logic.

This matters directly to Canadians. On September 21, 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state and, in the official statement, asserted that Israel’s sustained assault in Gaza “caused a devastating and preventable famine” and that the Israeli government has impeded access to food and other essential humanitarian supplies. Those are grave claims that helped frame a major Canadian policy decision; they should therefore meet a high evidentiary bar.

To explain why, let us begin with a simple observation: mass starvation does not present itself in single digits. History provides ample evidence. From the Bengal famine of 1943, to Ethiopia in the 1980s, to South Sudan more recently, the daily tolls of genuine famine are counted not in ones but in hundreds and thousands. That is the nature of systemic food collapse: it is rapid, widespread, and tragically impossible to conceal.

Now consider Gaza. If the population is 2.2 million, then even a starvation rate of one person per day translates to approximately 0.000045% of the population. To put that into perspective, the natural death rate in most societies—even under stable conditions—amounts to 20 to 25 times that figure each day. A rate so low is statistically invisible against the normal background of mortality. If this is the measure by which the word “starvation” is being invoked, then the term is being detached from any serious demographic or epidemiological meaning.

Furthermore, starvation is not a private, invisible act. If an individual were truly succumbing to malnutrition in a densely populated area like Gaza, the suffering would be communal: neighbors, relatives, and aid networks would all encounter it. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of cases and the tragedy becomes undeniable. Yet reports insist on a trickle of two, three, or five deaths daily, as if starvation had been reduced to a background hum. This is not how famine behaves; it is how political rhetoric manipulates statistics.

Another logical inconsistency arises when comparing these numbers to known patterns of food insecurity. Starvation deaths cluster: they spike after sustained deprivation, they hit vulnerable groups first (infants, the elderly, the sick), and they appear in waves. They do not emerge in a flat, uniform pattern of a handful per day. That statistical regularity alone should raise alarms about the credibility of the reports.

For Canadians, the standard should be simple: when rhetoric escalates to claims of “devastating and preventable famine,” policy must be anchored to transparent data—definitions, sources, and methods—not to press-cycle numbers that don’t add up. Recognition of statehood is one of the most consequential steps a Canadian government can take. It cannot rest on figures that, by basic demographic reasoning, fail to describe famine dynamics. Carney’s statement places Ottawa’s credibility on the line; Canadians should therefore demand clarity: Which datasets? What time windows? What thresholds were used to conclude “famine,” and how do they reconcile with single-digit daily counts?

None of this denies the apparent fact that Gaza faces hardship. But hardship is not famine, and single-digit deaths in a population of millions do not meet any serious threshold for starvation. What we are witnessing, then, is not a humanitarian dataset but a political narrative dressed in numbers.

Whether one’s sympathies lie with the Palestinians or with Israel, this distinction should not matter. Compromising truth and common sense in the service of any agenda does not strengthen that agenda—it corrodes it. False narratives may generate short-term solidarity, but in the long run, truth always reasserts itself, and those who build their case on distortions will see their credibility collapse alongside them. When numbers betray their own logic, the responsibility falls on us to call them what they are: statistically impossible claims masquerading as evidence.