by rageh | May 20, 2025 | blog
[Cairo] A recent study has confirmed the occurrence of ‘epigenetic’ mutations that are inherited through genetic mechanisms from the generation exposed to war-related violence, through the next, and possibly to the third generation. Further studies may reveal their transmission to a fourth generation.
The psychological trauma caused by wars, while not altering the DNA sequence itself, leaves epigenetic effects—akin to ‘genetic scars’—on the genes. These do not disappear with the end of suffering for the generation that experienced the trauma, but instead play a role in transgenerational changes, affecting gene activity and expression.
‘Gene expression’ is the reading of information within a gene that directs the cell to perform its function, as explained by Rana Dajani, Professor of Cell Biology and Genetics at the Hashemite University in Jordan.
She continues, as co-lead author of the study: “We know that exposure to different environmental conditions causes changes in gene expression.”
Rana told SciDev.Net: “But today, we pose an important question that science has yet to answer: Can this effect be passed on to children and grandchildren?”
She adds: “This led us to study the impact of wars on epigenetic markers among Syrian women who have experienced the horrors of war, and the possibility of these altered markers being passed on to their descendants.”
The study—conducted by a multinational, multidisciplinary research team—analyzed DNA samples from 131 individuals belonging to 48 Syrian refugee families in Jordan, representing three generations. It compared different forms of exposure to violence, whether direct, during pregnancy (in utero), or through what is known as germ cells (cells responsible for passing genetic traits from one generation to the next before birth).
Rana explains that participants were divided into three main groups. The first included three categories from families of Syrian women who witnessed the Hama massacre in 1982: grandmothers who were pregnant at the time and directly traumatized, their daughters who were fetuses then and thus exposed via what is known as the “fetal effect,” and granddaughters who inherited the trauma’s effects through “germ cells.”
The second group included Syrian women who experienced war violence in 2011 while pregnant, and their children who were fetuses at the time.
The third—control—group consisted of Syrian women who moved to Jordan before 1982 and were not exposed to any war-related trauma.
Using oral samples taken from the inside of the cheeks, the research team identified 35 locations in the DNA that showed changes among those exposed to violence: 21 sites linked to direct exposure, and 14 linked to exposure via germ cells. No significant changes were observed in those exposed as fetuses in their mothers’ wombs.
Although the sites linked to direct exposure differed completely from those linked to germ cell exposure, 32 of the sites showed similar patterns of change across all exposure types. This indicates a similar epigenetic response to violence, regardless of the timing of exposure.
Thus, the study—published in the journal Scientific Reports on February 27—establishes an epigenetic fingerprint of violence that can be passed down through generations. It opens new horizons for a deeper understanding of the effects of psychological trauma, not only on those who experience it but also on their descendants.
Rana explains: “When examining the genetic material of participants, we observed 14 epigenetic sites passed from women who experienced wars to their daughters and granddaughters, but we did not see these changes in any members of the control group.”
The study also observed an increased rate of cellular aging in the offspring of women who were directly exposed to violence while pregnant, as measured by the epigenetic biological clock, reflecting inherited biological effects related to trauma.
“The study supports previous findings indicating that epigenetic markers are affected by environmental conditions, causing accelerated aging of cells in those who were fetuses at the time of maternal trauma or violence,” commented Adel El-Sherbiny, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Epigenetics at Heidelberg University Hospital.
He adds: “The current study points to a link between war-related trauma and changes in epigenetic markers, but these are not associated with a specific effect or the appearance of particular symptoms.”
He stresses the importance of the study and the need to “pay more attention to the children of those who have suffered the horrors of war.”
Rana agrees, saying: “The study is part of a larger puzzle that calls for further research. Its scope did not allow us to reveal the function of each epigenetic change, but it stands out by linking these changes to participants’ exposure to war trauma, through comparison with multi-generational control groups.”
She adds: “Our next step is to investigate the transmission of these epigenetic markers to a fourth generation, and we will expand the research to include the impact of war violence in the Palestinian community.” She notes that the study’s findings are especially significant amid ongoing armed conflicts, particularly in Gaza, as they could contribute to a deeper understanding of inherited genetic effects of trauma and the need to include them in psychological support and scientific research efforts.
Rana points out that these changes do not necessarily mean a negative effect: “They may even be positive, helping children and grandchildren adapt to and face challenges.”
Asmaa Ibrahim, a clinical psychologist with a PhD in philosophy in psychology, comments: “Post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by a father may be passed on to the son due to incorrect coping patterns, and the problem can reach the grandson as well. This issue is influenced by the surrounding environmental conditions, making therapeutic intervention necessary across generations.”
Asmaa notes that psychological theories explain this transmission, including psychoanalytic theory, which posits the transfer of disorders among family members through implicit messages received during upbringing, and attachment theory, which explains the difficulty in emotional communication among children whose parents have experienced trauma.
Sahar Talaat, a biodynamic psychotherapist and professor of anatomical pathology at Kasr Al-Ainy Faculty of Medicine in Egypt, says that trauma survivors develop defensive behaviors as psychological defenses and coping mechanisms, such as dissociation, which makes the parent emotionally unavailable to their children, displacement of suppressed anger onto children, or resorting to addictive behaviors—all of which facilitate the intergenerational transmission of psychological effects.
Sahar emphasizes that some traumas can be collective and transgenerational, affecting entire families or communities, as seen with the descendants of victims of world wars, genocide, or indigenous peoples under settler colonialism.
She concludes: “There are thousands of cases in the Arab world that have yet to be studied, even though the effects of colonialism and wars are still present in new generations, amid a lack of support and research attention.”
This article was produced by the SciDev.Net Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa.
by rageh | May 16, 2025 | blog
Michael Ames, an investigative journalist, wrote a piece on the Free Press website titled “the Gaza Famine Myth – How lazy journalism, bad data, and skewed statistics fueled accusations of war crimes against Israel.”
This piece is meant to investigate and use data for confirming famine in Gaza as a “myth” promoted by UN, IPC, and other “lazy journalists” who use “bad data.”
So, did the article really prove that “famine” is a myth, or in best case scenario, a false allegation of Israel being committing a war crime? To prove or disprove, we must check out the information within Ames’s article.
The article begins as follows:
“Gaza Is Starving,” a headline in The New Yorker declared in early January 2024, pushing a harrowing narrative that took hold during the first six months of the war. In March, The Washington Post asked: “Is Gaza Heading Into Famine?” A headline in the Post the next day answered: “Israel’s War on Hamas Brings Famine to Gaza.”
In April 2024, Samantha Power, director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for the Biden administration, became the first senior U.S. official to declare that famine in Gaza had begun. She cited a report published by an independent, United Nations–affiliated monitoring system, called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC).
First developed in 2004 with backing from the UN, the IPC has become the global gold standard for food security analysis. Using a data-driven, evidence-based, five-phase scale that ticks up as food supplies run low, the IPC is designed to shield the humanitarian goal of having enough to eat from the political pressures of war. Today, a famine is declared only when the IPC’s data about a region shows that at least 20 percent of households have run out of food, at least 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished, and two people out of every 10,000 are dying each day from starvation.
Ames uses the IPC fact sheet to describe how to classify a famine. As the IPC mentions, famine to be declared needs some characteristics, as 20% of homes must run out of food, and so on.
On the other hand, Ames’s article misses clarifying the general context of IPC classification, which demonstrates the current and projected food insecurity situation in a particular area.
The IPC classification consists of 5 phases as follows:
As the table describes, food insecurity may reach “a critical situation” when analysis concludes any of phases 3 to 5, with 5 demonstrating a real dangerous situation.
Phase 5 itself may mean a catastrophe or a famine, as IPC identifies Phase 5:
“Households experience an extreme lack of food and/or cannot meet other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. For Famine Classification, area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality.”
In February to March 2024 IPC report, more than 676,000 people were classified as phase 5, +875,000 as phase 4, +577,000 as phase 3.
Did Ames mention real information? Yes, he did. However, this information lacked wider context.
Famine was not declared by the IPC till March 2024. However, +676,000 people were classified as “experiencing an extreme lack of food and/or cannot meet other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.” What is left for declaring famine is “the need to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality.”
Ames then writes:
In 20 years, just four famines have been confirmed by the IPC: Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and Sudan in 2024. A confirmed famine in Gaza, as Power told Congress was happening, would have been a historic catastrophe and the first to occur outside continental Africa. Power’s statement bolstered claims that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war, and that the U.S. government was therefore complicit in an alleged war crime.
But there were serious problems with Power’s sensational testimony. Foremost among them: The IPC never declared a famine in Gaza. The report she cited was a projection of possible outcomes, not a conclusive finding. The next month, USAID issued its own analysis alleging that famine was underway, an indictment so serious that it required confirmation from an independent board of global experts known as the Famine Review Committee (FRC).
The FRC, which functions as the IPC’s final authority and quality control check, rebuked the USAID analysis, calling its conclusions insupportable (the writer didn’t mention important facts!). The failures were stunning.
Again, I believe that the context isn’t that clear; here is a snapshot of the report Power cited:
The report didn’t declare famine, but ensured it is imminent.
Looking at the FRC’s conclusion which “rejected” the US-AID report, it also mentions:
“Firstly, all stakeholders who use the IPC for high-level decision-making must understand that whether a Famine classification is confirmed does not in any manner change the fact that extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip and does not in any manner change the immediate humanitarian imperative to address this civilian suffering by enabling complete, safe, unhindered, and sustained humanitarian access into and throughout the Gaza Strip, including through ceasing hostilities. All actors should not wait until a Famine classification for the current period is made to act accordingly. Secondly, the FRC would like to highlight that the very fact that we are unable to endorse (or not) FEWS NET’s analysis is driven by the lack of essential up to date data on human well-being in Northern Gaza, and Gaza at large. Thus, the FRC strongly requests all parties to enable humanitarian access in general, and specifically to provide a window of opportunity to conduct field surveys in Northern Gaza to have more solid evidence of the food consumption, nutrition, and mortality situation.”
Accordingly, why do organizations and mass media says, “there is a famine”? As the FRC mentions “All actors should not wait until a Famine classification for the current period is made to act accordingly.” In other words, there is a very critical situation that must be addressed and dealt with now, before a mass catastrophe takes place.
The FRC conclusion itself is:
FRC tells us in May 2024 that “Famine with evidence” didn’t occur. At the same time, the conclusion doesn’t tell that +500,000 people in that time were classified in Phase 5. So, the FRC conclusion opposed famine declaration on that time till July 2024, a year before the current situation.
It is worth noting that Ames’s article was published in May 2025, after Israel completely besieged the entire Gaza strip and stopped all methods of humanitarian aid delivery. That would be a leading cause of the situation deterioration.
The article argues:
Private sector food deliveries, such as trucks contracted to commercial warehouses, were left out of the agency’s estimates of the total food supply in north Gaza. As a result, as much as 82 percent of the “daily kilocalorie requirement” in northern Gaza last April wasn’t counted. In the same month, USAID’s famine monitors also left out 940 metric tons (2 million pounds) of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast donated by the UN to bakeries in north Gaza, enough to make about 1,400 metric tons (3 million pounds) of bread.
Then we read, in red and bold:
Famine—like genocide, fascist, and dictator—is a word susceptible to rhetorical abuse that can dilute and even invert its meaning.
I think this is where Ames expresses his real opinion; famine, genocide, and son on are “points of view” and “misused” words to express things which aren’t real.
What are his reasons? The fact that “famine” was never declared officially in Gaza, disrespecting the current situation.
Ames writes:
When asked about erasing the bakery donations, USAID’s internal famine-monitoring network justified the decision on the grounds that bread from those bakeries had been sold rather than given away for free.
It was never in doubt that the Israel-Hamas war brought immense human suffering to Gaza, including from food shortages. But USAID depicted a world that had little in common with reality.
North Gaza actually had 10 times more food last April than USAID had claimed. These findings should have been big news. As aid shipments increased, a famine had been averted.
But a troubling thing happened to the FRC report: Its conclusions were ignored or went unnoticed by news organizations—and other UN officials made it sound like nothing had changed.
Here, Ames claims:
1. North Gaza has 10 times more food than USAID had claimed, a claim which wasn’t evidence-based within Ames’s article.
2. USAID neglected the FRC conclusion. However, the FRC itself didn’t disapprove of the current crisis in Gaza.
Back to the article:
Food insecurity is not the only gauge of the war’s toll that now looks shakier than it did at first. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry recently deleted at least 3,400 deaths, including more than 1,000 children, from its lists of civilians killed by Israeli air strikes, according to nonprofit news watchdog HonestReporting.
The health ministry’s own statistics chief said some of the reported deaths had actually been from natural causes, or were people found to be in prison or missing. Yet the Hamas-run health ministry remains a go-to news source, despite significant errors found in its casualty reports by independent monitors.
I don’t think this part is related to famine approval or disapproval; it is an allegation of Hamas being manipulating the reports. As a result, the numbers mentioned by the Ministry of Health in Gaza should not be trusted.
This allegation will put many organizations in the spot of manipulation; what about the UN, ICRC, UNICEF, HRW, and others who publish reports based on the people on the ground?
Another point I didn’t get is: why would Hamas decrease the numbers of martyrs? Not the opposite?
Ames continues:
USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network was suspended in January when the Trump administration moved to close USAID and fold it into the State Department.
There were many hints that the headlines about famine in Gaza last year weren’t quite right. On social media in March 2024, one food importer showcased a tractor trailer full of frozen chicken, and a chef in Rafah advertised his plates of chicken and rice. One Gaza City restaurant showed off its racks of stuffed rotisserie chickens about two weeks after Power’s testimony.
Journalists can peruse a social media archive of life in Gaza compiled by Jacqui Peleg, an Israeli-British citizen who speaks Arabic and has been scraping YouTube, Telegram, TikTok, and other sites since 2018.
Posting on X under the name Imshin, Peleg has gained nearly 80,000 followers who are curious about the conflict’s complexities and skeptical of media narratives. After watching Gazans posting their new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes on Instagram for years, the opening of an upscale car dealership in August 2023 didn’t surprise her. “I just watch Gazans talk to each other,” she told me. “I’m not a journalist. I’m just watching and sharing.”
In March 2024, a video showed “a tractor trailer full of frozen chicken.” The video is real as I have checked it, but how is that related to a suggested famine or food insecurity crisis?
To justify my point of view it is worth noting that Gaza’s population was 2,3 M people, in which +50,000 lost their lives. So, there is still a big population in a very small area.
Also, the video was published in March 2024, while Ames’s article was published a few days ago.
Ames argues:
Last June, the FRC’s panel of independent experts released a follow-up report reaffirming famine was a serious risk in Gaza but saying that “available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.”
That same week, Reuters ran an elaborately produced feature which, along with ghoulish cartoon simulations of a dying child, strongly implied that a famine was underway in Gaza. An erroneous CNN headline said: “Children Are Dying of Starvation in Their Parents’ Arms as Famine Spreads Through Gaza.”
Clear messages from the UN last summer might have helped. Instead, 11 independent UN officials, led by Michael Fakhri, the special rapporteur on the right to food, said in July that an “intentional and targeted starvation campaign” by Israel “has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.” The denunciation was covered around the world. Fakhri couldn’t be reached by The Free Press.
In August 2024, the FRC confirmed that an actual famine was killing people in Sudan. Famine persisted in five regions of Sudan and was expected to spread to five more by this May, the report found. It barely made the news.
I would like to tell clarify that many of the Sudanese people fled to Egypt post the current “war” between the government and the militias. The remaining Sudanese have been suffering somehow similar outcomes of the war. On the other hand, Israel is occupying and besieging the Gaza sector. People don’t go in or out. There is no transfer of humanitarian aid. Sudan isn’t occupied, but Gaza, and the whole Palestine, is.
Here I want to ask Ames a question: why would the media focuses on the deteriorated Palestinian situation more than the Sudanese one? What are their motives? This is a real question.
Then, he writes:
To help make sense of all this, I talked to Nicholas Haan, who designed the food-insecurity classification system that became the IPC. Haan serves as a volunteer on the FRC, was one of the authors of the report that rebuked the USAID analysis, and is the lead technical adviser in a UN effort to replicate the IPC in areas such as health, hygiene, and shelter.
Famine—like genocide, fascist, and dictator—is a word susceptible to rhetorical abuse that can dilute and even invert its meaning. “My goal was to take famine from being a rhetorical word and make it a technical term,” Haan told me. When the IPC uses the word famine now, “we mean famine.”
IPC owes its success during the past two decades to the fact that it works. And because it works, nefarious governments and armed groups have tried to sabotage it. Reuters reported last year that when the ruling junta in Myanmar detained several food researchers, the IPC was forced to remove its reports about the country from the internet. In Yemen, Houthi forces hijacked the IPC process in 2023 to exaggerate food shortages and compel aid shipments that were then stolen by the Iranian-backed militia.
“Political actors, for their own reasons, will manipulate information. It’s a truism,” Haan told me. The best response, he said, is for the IPC to uphold its standards and the clarity of its messaging. “The most important, powerful, and necessary tool to achieve this is truth. When you give up truth, you’ve given up all moral standing to end suffering.” He wouldn’t comment on the famine declaration by Fakhri and the other UN officials.
Since the ceasefire in Gaza collapsed and Israel resumed its offensive, the UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs has apologized to Gazans for being “unable to move the international community to prevent this injustice.” Over the weekend, the UN refused to accept a U.S.-Israeli plan to deliver aid directly to civilians. On Tuesday, a senior Hamas official accused Israel of waging a “hunger war.”
The famine storyline in Gaza is like the proverbial bell that cannot be unrung. In September, ProPublica inaccurately said, “The UN has declared a famine in parts of Gaza.” When I asked if the reporter who wrote the article had read the FRC’s reports from last summer, a ProPublica spokesperson said it stands by the reporting, citing statements by UN officials who aren’t part of the IPC process and an FRC follow-up report in November. But that report, like the others before it, warned of “a strong likelihood” of famine, not that famine had begun.
The New Yorker has published roughly 20 interviews that referred to famine or starvation in Gaza—and three that addressed the IPC system and the FRC’s authoritative role. In all that reporting, The New Yorker never mentioned the FRC’s rejection of USAID’s analysis or its no-famine verdict.
As Haan and his FRC colleagues wrote about USAID’s slippery numbers last year, “High uncertainty is compounded through several layers of assumptions.” So many unthinkable tragedies have occurred since Hamas’s massacre on October 7, 2023, but a famine in Gaza isn’t one of them.
I believe that the last lines belong to what is known as “confirmation bias.” Ames ends his article using ensuring the “fact” that was repeated everyday since the beginning of Israeli atrocities: On October 7, Hamas did horrible things, Israel reacted, and tragedies occurred.
I have a few final notes:
1. “Gazans” were not mentioned when Ames concludes there is a human tragedy, as follows:
a. It was never in doubt that the Israel-Hamas war brought immense human suffering to Gaza, including from food shortages.
b. So many unthinkable tragedies have occurred since Hamas’s massacre on October 7, 2023, but a famine in Gaza isn’t one of them.
2. Ames mentioned Gazans as an entity when he says:
After watching Gazans posting their new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes on Instagram for years, the opening of an upscale car dealership in August 2023 didn’t surprise her. “I just watch Gazans talk to each other,” she told me. “I’m not a journalist. I’m just watching and sharing.”
3. Hamas was mentioned quite a few times as a the reason of the Gazan’s starvation and as a source of manipulation.
4. This article is categorized under “Israel and antisemitism.”
So, did Ames really succeed in proving that Gaza’s famine is a myth?
