The bipartisan amendment, supported by 62 Democrats and 207 Republicans and passed in a vote of 269 to 144, will now be submitted to the Senate for consideration.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib criticized the vote as “genocide denial.” (Getty)
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to prohibit the State Department from using funds from the international affairs budget to provide figures on the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The bipartisan amendment, supported by 62 Democrats and 207 Republicans and passed in a vote of 269 to 144, will now be submitted to the Senate for consideration.
Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib sharply criticized the vote, which observers say is an attempt to hide the extent of the destruction Israel has caused in the Gaza Strip.
“Since 1948, Mr. Speaker, there has been a coordinated effort, particularly in this chamber, to dehumanize the Palestinians and erase them from existence,” Tlaib said in a speech to the House of Representatives ahead of the vote.
“My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even mentioning the number of Palestinian deaths.”
The congresswoman from Michigan reminded her colleagues of the tens of thousands of people killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip and stressed that many of the dead were children.
“Every hour, six children are killed in Gaza, Mr. Speaker. But Palestinians are not just numbers. 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,” she said.
“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, and not even when they are dead. That is absolutely disgusting. That is genocide denial.”
The vote comes as Israel’s war against Gaza enters its tenth month. According to the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry, at least 37,765 Palestinians have been killed so far, with 86,429 more expected to be killed.
US officials, including President Joe Biden, have sought to cast doubt on the reliability of Gaza death toll figures by suggesting the data may have been manipulated by Hamas.
“I have no idea that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people were killed,” Biden said in October, prompting Gaza health authorities to release a detailed list of the names and ages of Palestinians killed by Israel at the time.
UN agencies and NGOs have proven that the casualty figures reported by the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health in previous Israeli attacks on Gaza were accurate.
The latest vote in Congress follows a series of votes on the Palestine issue that appear to have been an attempt to protect Israel’s image in the face of ongoing war.
In November, the House of Representatives voted to censure Tlaib for her rhetoric about Israel’s war on Gaza.
In April, Congress passed a bill banning TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese owners. Following the bill’s passage, several lawmakers, including Republican Senator Mitt Romney, emphasized how the bill would prevent the spread of pro-Palestinian material.
In an interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Romney suggested that the bill had “overwhelming support” in Congress because the app contained so much pro-Palestinian content.
“If you look at the posts on TikTok and the number of Palestinians compared to other social media sites, this is overwhelmingly the case on TikTok,” Romney said.
Recently, the House of Representatives voted 274 to 155 for a bill to punish the International Criminal Court (ICC) after its chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants against Israeli politicians.
