Dissenting lawmakers decried the “genocide denial” of a bipartisan measure banning State Department officials from using agency funds to cite statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry.
Palestinians and corpses of people killed by Israeli airstrikes outside the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip, on Oct. 9, 2023. (Bashar Taleb, Palestinian News & Information Agency for APAimages, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams
Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Barbara Lee took to the House floor to denounce an amendment to next year’s State Department spending bill that would ban U.S. officials from using agency funding to cite casualty figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz’s (D-FL) amendment to H.R. 8771, the State Department Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2025, passed by a vote of 269-144 on Thursday with broad bipartisan support.
The bipartisan measure — co-sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Joe Wilson (R-SC), and Carol Miller (R-WV) — bans State Department officials from using agency funds to cite any statistics from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. [For enactment, the bill still faces a vote in the Senate.]
NEW: House has voted 269-144 to ban giving funds to the State Department to cite the Gaza Health Ministry, undermining the organization’s death & injury figures.
The amendment was led by Democratic Reps. Moskowitz & Gottheimer and Republicans Wilson (SC), Lawler, Miller (WV). https://t.co/uFnvFPrULQ
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) June 27, 2024
“How absolutely unconscionable that my colleagues are offering an amendment to prevent our U.S. government from even citing the Palestinian death toll,” said Tlaib (D-MI). “Since 1948… there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence.”
“The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians did not end in 1948,” Tlaib continued. “Today… we are witnessing the Israeli apartheid government carry out a genocide in Gaza, and in real time, and this amendment is an attempt to hide it.”
Noting the “more than 15,000 Palestinian children” killed by Israel’s bombs, bullets, and starvation-inducing siege, Tlaib said that “six children… are killed in Gaza every single hour.”
“But Palestinians are not just numbers,” she said. “Behind these numbers are real people—mothers, fathers, sons, daughters who have their lives stolen from them and their families torn apart, and we should not be trying to hide it.”
“These are innocent children and babies who have been bombed in their tents, burned alive, dismembered, and deliberately starved to death. Where is our shared humanity in this chamber?” Tlaib asked. “There is so much anti-Palestinian racism in this chamber that my colleagues don’t even want to acknowledge that Palestinians exist at all—not when they’re alive, and now, not even when they’re dead.”
“It’s absolutely disgusting,” she said. “This is genocide denial.”
“I won’t remain silent as the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, while folks attempt to erase those who were killed with our own weapons,” the congresswoman vowed, holding up a thick ream of paper that she said was a list of Palestinians killed during the war, to be entered into the Congressional Record.
“The list is too long that I can’t even submit it because of the text limit,” she added.
Lee (D-CA) said that the Gaza Health Ministry’s data is “often the only information available about what is happening on the ground in Gaza.”
“This amendment would severely inhibit the United States government’s ability to assess the situation,” she warned.
“Israel has sealed Gaza’s borders barring foreign journalists and others who can offer this reporting,” Lee added. “The journalists and medical professionals who are there are unable to account for all of the bodies trapped under rubble and discovered in mass graves.”
Lee noted that the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures “have been found to be credible in the past, holding up to United Nations scrutiny, independent investigations, and even Israel’s tallies.”
Israel Defense Forces officials have also concurred with the roughly 2:1 civilian-to-militant fatality figure claimed by the Gaza Health Ministry.
In February, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that “over 25,000” Palestinian women and children had been killed in Gaza up to that date, although the Pentagon subsequently attempted to walk back his admission.
[Related: The Real Gaza Death Toll]
President Joe Biden has been accused of genocide denial for casting aspersions on Gaza Health Ministry casualty reports.
“The president paved the way for horrific amendments like these when he questioned Palestinian death counts that were deemed credible by independent human rights organizations and our own State Department,” said Tariq Habash, a former U.S. Education Department official who resigned earlier this year over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Moskowitz — whose all-time top campaign contributor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — contended Wednesday that “at the end of the day, the Gaza Ministry of Health is the Hamas Ministry of Health” while disdaining “the idea that the United States government would rely on a terrorist organization for statistics.”
Moskowitz, right, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, and others in Israel, Nov. 12, 2023. (U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
However, the State Department has repeatedly — and uncritically — cited the ministry’s figures in past reports on previous Israeli attacks on Gaza.
In November, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified before Congress that the true death toll from the current Israeli war on Gaza is likely “even higher” than reported, as thousands of Palestinians are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.
“We think they’re very high, and it could be they’re even higher than are being cited."
US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Barbara Leaf has said that the Gaza death toll may be higher than the near-11,000 figure reported by the Palestinian health ministry pic.twitter.com/iDe1kyxBjg
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) November 9, 2023
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 37,765 Palestinians — mostly women and children — have been killed during Israel’s 265-day assault on the embattled strip. More than 86,400 Gazans have been wounded, and over 11,000 others are missing.
Israel’s conduct in the war is the subject of an ongoing genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is also seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation, as well as three Hamas leaders for alleged extermination and other crimes.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also recently added Israel and Hamas — whose political wing has governed Gaza for a generation— to its “List of Shame” of countries and governments that kill and harm children.
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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25k tons of explosives were dropped the first month, the latest I’ve read is 70k, though given that first number, I imagine it’s a vast undercount. If one person died per ton of bombs, then at least 70k have been murdered. That “around 30-35k” we’ve been hearing for the last few months is obviously also a vast undercount. The U.S. government does not like the truth to be known. Given that fact, I don’t understand why the talking heads are up in arms about Trump’s countless lies on the debate stage last night. It seems to me that is the only quality necessary for that puppet position.
Disgusting doesn’t begin to illustrate the behaviour of the US with regard to Israel and it’s genocide against the Palestinian people. Barbaric, evil, unconscionable? Is there even a word in the English language to describe this? The same goes for my government in Canada who continues to support Israel’s genocide – genocide Justin and his Minster of Foreign Affairs genocide Jolly (Melanie Jolly). History will condemn them all forever.
With at least 70k TONS of bombs rained down on Gaza, we know the “around 35k” death toll is a big undercount anyway. This way pundits can just estimate and not be wrong at all. Congress is full of lying cretins. I’m surprised how surprised the dems are all acting at GenoJ’s performance last night. Just another indication that they may believe their lying liar selves but the truth will out.
Geeze and these lamebrains are “running” our country? More like ruining it. I’d say this to all DC government officials if I could:
YOU ARE FIRED!!!
GA-AIPAC darling and shameless hypocrite D-Rep. Lucy McBath, 7th district, voting YES for ‘genocide denial’.
“In the wake of her loss, McBath ran for and was elected to the House of Representatives, where she fights for legislation around gun safety she says could have saved her son.”
I wonder if death and injury figures ever helped Lucy in her fight for gun safety?
It is hard to feel any sympathy with people who have supported the US proxy war in Ukraine. I’m referring, if it is not obvious, to so-called “progressives.” When they wanted you to arm and fund Ukraine, you were johnny-on-the-spot, but now you want to refute the very nature of the gangster-ridden House you are part of. Time to go home, get on your knees, and beg forgiveness for being part of the Reign of Terror.