Prohibiting US officials from citing Palestinian death toll is 'disgusting': Congresswoman

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) – It is "disgusting" that members of the US House of Representatives would support legislation to prohibit US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll from eight months of Israeli attacks, said an outspoken member of Congress on Wednesday.

"I wanted to say how absolutely unconscionable that my colleagues are offering an amendment to prevent our US government from even citing the Palestinian death toll," Rashida Tlaib said on the House floor.

Since 1948, she said, there has been a "coordinated effort" to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence, referring to the Nakba or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Israel-Palestine war.

"My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll. So let me read it into the record. Here are the latest casualties of Palestinians killed: 37,718 Palestinians, including more than 15,000 Palestinian children and more than 86,377 Palestinians have been injured," Tlaib said, citing Gaza Health Ministry figures, figures backed up by the names of the deceased and tallies by international groups.

Stressing that six children are killed in Gaza every hour, Tlaib said Palestinians are "not just numbers."

"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, said Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress.

"It's absolutely disgusting. This is genocide denial," she said, adding that she refuses to stay silent.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian group Hamas.

More than 37,700 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 86,400 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Over eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.