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

    lawmakers have barred the U.S. State Department from citing death toll figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health

    I wonder if the issue is the source? I don’t know anything about the Gaza Ministry of Health to know how accurate their reporting might be.

    • eldavi@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      yes, it’s the source; but not in the way you might be thinking.

      the assumption is that anything out of a gazan mouth must be propaganda, but they’re the only ones on the ground counting and their numbers are in line with estimates from other groups and lower than some of them.

    • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      4 months ago

      The Gaza Ministry of Health has been recognized as a believable source (under the circumstances of being in a state of war since 2007) by the US government for years. This is a purely political move.

      • 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).

    • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 months ago

      The Gaza Ministry of Health has been the most accurate reporter in the region for decades, to the point that even Israel and the IDF use their numbers. If anything, their current estimates err on the low side as a result of so much infrastructure being destroyed in Gaza and the health ministry only counting bodies that have been found. This study published in Lancet estimates that “up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza” after combining all direct and indirect factors such as the ongoing famine created by the siege.

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

        Yup, I looked more into it, and they do indeed seem trustworthy. I just knee-jerk question whether an org is trustworthy if they have a clear motivation to misrepresent the truth.

        • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          4 months ago

          Good instinct. But doesn’t hold true in this instance. I too had that instinct at the beginning of this round of genocide until I did some reading.