Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib slammed that the U.S. house representatives have voted by majority on a resolution that would bar the State Department to use International budget fun to cite Gaza death toll.
Speaking on the floor of Congress, Tlaib said, “It’s disgusting that my colleagues would support legislation to prohibit US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll.”
“They want to erase the Palestinians who are living, and now they are trying to erase the Palestinians who are dead. This is genocide denial,” she added.
The International Court of Justice ruled earlier this year there was a plausible case of ‘Israel’ committing genocide in Gaza, after South Africa submitted a case on the issue.
On Friday, the majority of members of the U.S. Congress, including more than 60 Democrats, voted in favour of an amendment that would prevent the Governemnt from relying on the Gaza health ministry’s count for the death toll in Gaza.
269 members voted with it, 62 democrats joined the vote, while only two Republicans did not vote in favour of it.
The vote pushes forward a piece of legislation that, if it passes, could further silence the discussion within the US government about the devastating impact that Israel’s war on Gaza has had on the enclave’s Palestinian population.
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, many international NGOs as well as the United Nations have relied on the Gaza health ministry to know how many Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.
It has been the sole source of regularly updated information on the death toll, as Israeli forces have decimated the enclave’s health infrastructure and repeatedly laid siege to several hospitals.
However, the Biden administration had already cast doubt on the data provided by the Ministry of Health, last October.
“[There is] no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people were killed,” Biden said in a press conference at the onset of war.
Soon later Biden’s remarks, a list of names and ages of those Palestinains killed in the war was published, which proved Gaza’s health ministry reliabilty.
Reports also surfaced that officials within the Biden administration had cited the Gaza health ministry’s death count in 20 different situation reports, with one official saying at the time that the toll was likely an undercount, not an overestimate.
So far, the death toll stands at nearly 38,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children.
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