House of Representatives prohibits State Department from reporting Health Ministry death toll in Gaza

June 28 (UPI) – Members of the US House of Representatives have voted to prohibit the State Department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures on deaths in the war between Israel and Hamas.

The amendment passed the House of Representatives on Thursday by a vote of 266 to 144, with 24 abstentions. Only two Republicans voted against the measure, while 142 Democrats supported the bill.

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The measure was added as an addendum to a State Department budget proposal and, if enacted, would bar the federal agency from accessing the main source of Palestinian deaths in the eight-month conflict.

News agencies, including UPI, used casualty figures from the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health, also known as the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which compiled daily statistics during the conflict.

As of Thursday, the ministry said 37,765 Palestinians had been killed and 86,429 injured during the war.

Israel has repeatedly questioned the accuracy of these figures, but the United Nations has confirmed them and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cites them on its website.

Democrats who voiced opposition to the bill included Barbara Lee of California, a Democrat.

On Thursday, she said in plenary that while we wish there were other sources of information, the ministry is often the only official source on what is happening on the ground in Gaza.

“Israel has sealed Gaza’s borders and denied access to foreign journalists and others who could provide such coverage,” she said, adding that the ministry had the support of the United Nations and other institutions and experts and was making “best efforts to determine the number of dead under the most difficult conditions.”

“This amendment would significantly limit the ability of the U.S. government to assess the situation,” she said, urging her colleagues to vote against the amendment.

Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the authors of the amendment, defended the measure, arguing that using figures from the department, which is formally under Hamas’s control, would mean that the State Department was relying on information from an organization it has designated as a terrorist group.

“There are better ways to do this,” he said. “I just think the United States should stop relying on a terrorist organization for this information. Remember, Hamas’s goal is to sell propaganda to the American people, to sell propaganda to the world.”

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian lawmaker to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians, criticized the amendment as “unconscionable.”

“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,” she said.

“Where is our common humanity in this room? 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 are alive, not even when they are dead.

“This is absolutely disgusting. This is genocide denial.”