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.”

  • jonne@infosec.pub
    0·
    4 months ago

    Is anyone else on the ground in Gaza counting the dead? The health ministry is the only source, so functionally that’s what this law does. And if you compare the health ministry numbers to the recent estimate by the Lancet (~180000), the health ministry is under counting, because they only know of the people that have been brought into hospitals, not the ones still under rubble or executed and left to rot/buried in mass graves by the IDF.

    • neatchee@lemmy.world
      02·
      4 months ago

      Totally agree. Not sure why I’m being downvoted to oblivion for providing objectively factual statements about the content of the vote.

      You’re right. It’s fucked. I’m just trying to provide clarity to an ambiguous post title