House Overwhelmingly Approves Amendment That Bars State Department From Citing Gaza Ministry of Health’s Death Toll

House Republicans will head into budget negotiations with Senator Schumer with an amendment supported by dozens of Democrats that could actually become law — a prohibition on the Department of State using the Gaza Ministry of Health’s death toll for the war in Israel.The House has been debating 12 annual funding bills for days, though only one has passed. Three more — state and foreign operations, homeland security, and defense — are slated to receive floor votes on either Thursday or Friday. As part of the state and foreign operations funding bill, a Democrat, Congressman Jared Moskowitz, authored the amendment that would stop the use of the Gaza health ministry death toll. When the amendment came up for a vote, it passed the House overwhelmingly and in a bipartisan way. The amendment was added to the state and foreign operations bill with 269 members — including 62 Democrats — voting for it. Just two Republicans voted against it. The agency has been criticized for inflating the total death toll of Palestinian Arabs at Gaza since the war with Israel began on October 7. Hamas has controlled the health ministry since winning the 2006 elections at Gaza. In May, the United Nations released its own numbers on the number of “identified” fatalities at Gaza, saying it was fewer than 25,000. At the same time, the health ministry said it was 34,000 dead. Mr. Moskowitz says that there are other ways to get the death toll at Gaza, but America should not rely on a terrorist-run agency that is seeking sympathy on the world stage. “My amendment does not deny the tragedy that is going on in Gaza due to Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel on October 7th,” Mr. Moskowitz says. “At the end of the day, the Gaza Ministry of Health is the Hamas ministry of health.”During debate regarding his amendment on Wednesday, Mr. Moskowitz said the American government should not “rely on a terrorist organization for statistics, for data.”“The UN — which was relying on … the Gaza Ministry of Health — lowered their numbers just a couple of weeks ago by a significant amount. Thousands, in fact,” he continued. “Remember: It is Hamas’s goal to sell propaganda to the American people, to sell propaganda to the world.”The chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, tells the Sun she is “so disturbed” that so many Democrats would vote for the amendment. “I was so disturbed to see that,” Ms. Jayapal said after 62 of her Democratic colleagues voted for the amendment. “This is the official estimate that the state department has been using, that the WHO has been using, that has been the standard. To say that we’re not going to use that, in my mind, is like denying that these deaths happened.”“It’s just incredibly painful, I know, for people across the country to watch that. You can’t deny these deaths are happening just by erasing the number that the ministry has been providing us all these years,” she continued.Another member of the Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, lambasted Mr. Moskowitz and his amendment during debate on Wednesday, saying that it was just part of a long history of trying to “dehumanize” Palestinian Arabs. “I wanted to say how absolutely unconscionable that my colleagues are offering an amendment to prevent our U.S. government from even citing the Palestinian death toll. Since 1948 … there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence,” Ms. Tlaib said on the House floor. “The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians did not end in 1948. Today, Mr. Speaker, we are witnessing the Israeli apartheid government carry out a genocide in Gaza. This amendment is an attempt to hide it,” Ms. Tlaib continued.Republicans have added a number of so-called poison pill amendments to their annual funding bills before they receive a final floor vote and head over to the Senate, including an amendment to the homeland security funding bill that would reduce the homeland security secretary’s salary to zero. Yet given the strong showing of Democrats in favor of Mr. Moskowitz’s amendment, it may be one of the few that survive. Republicans won a similar fight with Mr. Schumer earlier this year. Even though they got few concessions on government funding or other amendments, the Democrat-controlled Senate agreed to bar the American government from funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency until at least 2025.

House Overwhelmingly Approves Amendment That Bars State Department From Citing Gaza Ministry of Health’s Death Toll

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