‘Genocide denial’: Tlaib and Lee criticise bipartisan efforts to keep Gaza death toll low

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Barbara Lee protested in the House of Representatives on Wednesday against an amendment to the State Department’s budget proposal for next year that would prohibit U.S. officials from using agency funds to cite casualty figures provided by the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz’s (D-Fl.) amendment to H.R. 8771, the State Department Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2025, passed Thursday by a vote of 269 to 144 with broad bipartisan support. The bipartisan proposal — co-sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) — prohibits State Department officials from using agency funds to cite statistics from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

“It is absolutely unconscionable that my colleagues are introducing an amendment that would prevent our US government from even mentioning the number of Palestinian deaths,” said Tlaib (D-Michigan). “Since 1948 … there has been a coordinated effort, particularly in this chamber, to dehumanize the Palestinians and erase their existence.”

“The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians did not end in 1948,” Tlaib continued. “Today … we are witnessing the Israeli apartheid government committing genocide in Gaza, in real time, and this amendment is an attempt to cover it up.”

Tlaib referred to the “more than 15,000 Palestinian children” killed by Israel’s bombs, bullets and famine-inducing siege, saying that “every hour, six children… are killed in Gaza.”

“But Palestinians are not just numbers,” she said. “Behind those numbers are real people – mothers, fathers, sons, daughters whose lives have been stolen and whose families have been torn apart. And we should not try to hide that.”

“These are innocent children and babies who were bombed in their tents, burned alive, dismembered and deliberately starved. Where is our shared humanity in this room?” Tlaib asked. “There is so much anti-Palestinian racism in this room that my colleagues don’t even want to acknowledge that Palestinians exist – not when they were alive and not even when they are dead.”

“This is absolutely disgusting,” she said. “This is genocide denial.”

“As the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, I will not remain silent while people try to erase those who were killed with our own weapons,” the congresswoman vowed, holding up a thick stack of paper that she said was a list of Palestinians killed during the war that should be included in the Congressional record.

“The list is so long that I can’t even submit it because of the text limit,” she added.

Lee (D-Calif.) said Gaza Health Ministry data is “often the only information available about what is happening on the ground in Gaza.”

“This addition would significantly limit the US government’s ability to assess the situation,” she warned.

“Israel has sealed Gaza’s borders and barred entry to foreign journalists and others who might offer such reports,” Lee added. “The journalists and medical professionals who are there cannot explain how many bodies have been discovered trapped under rubble and in mass graves.”

Lee noted that Gaza’s Health Ministry figures “have proven credible in the past and have stood up to scrutiny by the United Nations, independent investigations and even Israel’s counts.”

Representatives of the Israel Defense Forces also agree with the figure given by the Gaza Health Ministry of approximately 2:1 civilian to militant deaths.

In February, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that “over 25,000” Palestinian women and children had been killed in Gaza by that point, but the Pentagon later attempted to retract its admission.

President Joe Biden was accused of genocide denial for raising doubts about Gaza Health Ministry casualty statistics.

“The president paved the way for horrific changes like this when he questioned the Palestinian death toll figures that were deemed credible by independent human rights organizations and our own State Department,” said Tariq Habash, a former U.S. Department of Education official who resigned earlier this year over the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Moskowitz – whose largest campaign donor of all time is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – claimed on Wednesday that “ultimately, the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry is the Hamas Health Ministry,” while scorning “the notion that the United States government would base its statistics on a terrorist organization.”

However, the US State Department has repeatedly – ​​and uncritically – cited the department’s figures in previous reports on previous Israeli attacks on Gaza.

In November, Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, testified before the US Congress that the true death toll in the current Israeli war on Gaza was likely “even higher” than reported, with thousands of Palestinians missing or presumed dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 37,765 Palestinians – mostly women and children – have been killed during the 265-day Israeli assault on the embattled Gaza Strip. More than 86,400 Gaza residents have been injured and over 11,000 others are missing.

Israel’s conduct in the war is the subject of an ongoing genocide trial before the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor also wants 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. Three Hamas leaders are also to be arrested for alleged extermination and other crimes.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres also recently added Israel and Hamas – whose political wing has ruled the Gaza Strip for a generation – to his “list of shame” of countries and governments that kill and inflict suffering on children.