House votes to bar State Dept. from citing Gaza Health Ministry death toll

June 28 (UPI) -- Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have voted to prohibit the State Department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry's death toll in the Israel- Hamas war.

The amendment passed the House 266-144 with 24 abstaining from voting on Thursday. Only two Republicans voted against the measure while 142 Democrats crossed the aisle in approving it.

The measure was added as an amendment to a State Department appropriations bill that, if signed into law, will deny the federal agency use of the primary source for Palestinian fatalities in the eight-month-old conflict.

News agencies, including UPI, have been using casualty numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry, also known as the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which during the conflict has been producing daily statistics.

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

Israel has repeatedly raised questions about the accuracy of those numbers, but the United Nations has supported the figures and its United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cites it on its website .

Rep. Barbara Lee , D-Calif., was among Democrats who voiced opposition to the bill.

From the floor Thursday, she said that while we may wish there were other sources for the information, the ministry is often the only official source about what is happening on the ground in Gaza.

"Israel has sealed Gaza's borders, barring foreign journalists and others who could offer this reporting," she said, adding that the ministry has the backing of the United Nations and other institutions and experts that it is making "a good faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions."

"This amendment would severely inhibit the United States government's ability to assess the situation," she said, urging her fellow colleagues to vote the amendment down.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., one of the author's of the amendment, defended the measure, stating that by using the figures from the ministry, which is technically under the control of Hamas, would mean the State Department is relying on information from an organization it has designated a terrorist group.

"There are better ways to do this," he said. "I just believe that the United States should stop relying on a terrorist organization for this information. Remember, It is Hamas' goal to sell propaganda to the American people, to sell propaganda to the world."

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian House member who has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians, chastised the amendment as "unconscionable."

"Today, we are witnessing the Israeli apartheid government carry out a genocide in Gaza in real time and this amendment is an attempt to hide it," she said.

"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 are dead.

"It is absolutely disgusting. This is genocide denial."