In more news from Capitol Hill, lawmakers have barred the U.S. State Department from citing death toll figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health. Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Congress’s lone Palestinian American lawmaker, Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, read into the Congressional Record the toll of Palestinians killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza: more than 37,700 dead, 15,000 of them children. Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “But Palestinians are not just numbers. Behind these numbers are real people — mothers, fathers, sons, daughters — who have had 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? 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. This is genocide denial.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “But Palestinians are not just numbers. Behind these numbers are real people — mothers, fathers, sons, daughters — who have had 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? 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. This is genocide denial.”

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      4 months ago

      I looked more into it:

      On 10 November 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US intelligence community has growing confidence that death toll reports from the Gaza Health Ministry are roughly accurate. The article also reported that despite US officials had growing confidence, they did not have enough information to confirm for sure.

      In January 2024, Israeli news magazine Mekomit reported that Israeli intelligence officials had concluded that Health Ministry casualty reports are generally reliable and are used in briefings to senior officials.

      So yeah, that’s probably not it. I just instinctively distrust orgs that have a clear motive to misreport figures (i.e. inflating numbers could get other countries to intervene on Gaza’s behalf).