Andrew Seal, who serves on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification famine review committee, compared Israel to Nazi Germany and accused the Jewish state of killing its own people on Oct. 7
An author of a U.N.-backed report that accused Israel of creating “famine” in Gaza is a longtime anti-Israel radical who has defended Hamas, claimed Jewish politicians have a “conflict of interest” on Middle Eastern issues, and supported boycotts targeting the Jewish state.
Andrew Seal, who serves on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) famine review committee and helped write the IPC’s highly publicized report published earlier this month, has a history of incendiary rhetoric that includes comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and accusing the Jewish state of having killed its own people on Oct. 7, 2023.
The report, which declared the situation in Gaza a “famine” and called for an immediate Israeli “ceasefire,” said the “time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading.”
Numerous mainstream media outlets picked up the IPC’s claims without disclosing Seal’s history of attacking Israel and defending Hamas terrorists or noting the possibility that his beliefs could have influenced the IPC report. Newspapers and networks like the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and ABC News relied on the IPC report to claim Israeli policies have led to mass starvation, with the Times stating that “months of severe aid restrictions imposed by Israel on the territory” have caused a famine “across most of Gaza.”
Just one month after the Oct. 7 massacres, Seal defended a statement from Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad in which the terrorist promised to repeat the attacks “again and again.” Seal said he believed Hamad’s comments were reasonable because Israel was “currently committing genocide.”
“You can’t ignore the fact that one side is currently committing genocide and the other isn’t,” Seal wrote. “And, do you realistically expect a political leader of occupied & oppressed people to say they will stop fighting in absence of an alternative? Let’s be real.”
In another post on X, Seal claimed there was “no evidence” Hamas committed sexual violence against Israeli women, describing footage of the Oct. 7 attacks as “propaganda.”
He has also argued the terrorist organization should be allowed to remain in power in Gaza.
“Hamas, the de facto government of #Gaza, has to go because of extreme rhetoric and war crimes? Under that criteria the Israeli government would also have to be removed,” he wrote.
It appears Seal does not believe Hamas committed the Oct. 7 attacks. In another post, he wrote those who claim Israel killed its own civilians are “raising legitimate questions.” He has also brushed aside the U.N.’s employment of Hamas terrorists as aid workers in Gaza.
Seal has made social media statements about Jews outside Israel as well. Citing a Jewish Chronicle story about Jews serving in former British prime minister Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, Seal argued those with “family members living in either Palestine or Israel” should declare a conflict of interest.
Seal has made several posts related to the Holocaust, arguing Israel’s supposed genocide against Palestinians makes Holocaust remembrance more important than ever. He also claimed German guilt over the Holocaust is the reason why the country will not acknowledge Israel’s supposed genocide.
The IPC staffer cited evacuation zones Israel created for Gazan civilians as an example of “ethnic cleansing” and claimed Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea are simply the terror group’s attempts to enforce the U.N.’s Genocide Convention.
Hamas and the Houthis are not the only aggressors Seal has defended. As noted by Israeli researcher Eitan Fischberger and UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, much of his social media activity includes repeating Iranian propaganda.
Seal’s background raises new questions about the objectivity of the IPC report. The Israeli government issued its own analysis, finding the organization used incomplete data and misrepresented its own numbers in compiling its report.
“With no direct evidence, IPC resorted to inference,” the Israeli statement reads, pointing to the organization’s decision to skirt its own guidelines for determining whether a famine is taking place and reaching conclusions “that were directly inconsistent with the evidence presented.”
“The Gaza IPC reports reveal more than isolated technical errors,” the statement continued. “They expose a systematic lowering of standards: neutrality safeguards abandoned, critical stakeholders excluded, data selectively used, projections skewed toward worst cases, famine thresholds bent until they no longer matched the IPC manual, and transparency sidelined as key datasets and analytical reasoning remained inaccessible to outside scrutiny.”
Other organizations have found that the IPC report included faulty statistics and misleading evidence. The Network Contagion Research Institute said the IPC “engaged in data fraud by systematically manipulating statistical models, suppressing contradictory evidence, and concealing favorable outcomes associated with U.S.-led aid efforts,” and Israel on Wednesday demanded that the IPC retract its report.
Seal’s extremist rhetoric against Israel—which appears likely to bring even more scrutiny on the IPC report—dates back to at least 2018, when he described Israel’s founding in 1948 as the “destruction of the state of #Palestine by Jewish insurgents.”
He also expressed support for anti-Israel boycotts, posting the hashtag “BDS” in reference to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
“We should all be given option to boycott goods & services from companies supporting illegal #Israelisettlements. If they have nothing to be ashamed of stop hiding!” he wrote on X.
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