Democratic leaders did not tell members to vote against an amendment to block the State Department from citing Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Democratic leaders did not tell members to vote against an amendment to block the State Department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s statistics.

The House of Representatives has voted to effectively conceal the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Thursday, lawmakers voted 269-144 on an amendment to prohibit the State Department from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The measure is part of the annual State Department appropriations bill. It was led by Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Fla., and Josh Gottheimer, N.J., and Republican Reps. Joe Wilson, S.C.; Mike Lawler, N.Y.; and Carol Miller, W.V.

Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, told The Intercept that the amendment is part of a trend of anti-Palestinian sentiment in Congress since the start of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. “By preventing any recognition of the number of Palestinians killed since October, this amendment is a clear example of genocide denial and is no different from what was done towards victims of genocides in Rwanda and Armenia.”

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
      23·
      5 months ago

      To me, if my children or wife had been taken hostage. There would be no limit…

      So then, when about all those people killed in the process. What about the mothers and children dying? The ones that are not directly involved in this fight either. Do their spouses get the chance for the same level of revenge once they’re killed?

      Do you not see that inequality and what it does?

        • Zink@programming.dev
          10·
          5 months ago

          What if you were born in the wrong place and your family got gunned down or buried under rubble because the enemy thought a hostage (or their dead body) was in a building at the end of your street?

          You can’t always assume you’re the one who is both on a righteous quest and in possession of superior firepower.

          • ramble81@lemm.ee
            9·
            5 months ago

            His statement is beyond telling. To him, everyone is a terrorist, so none of them matter.

            • Zink@programming.dev
              2·
              5 months ago

              Yep. I see that as a reason to treat people with grace and compassion, especially the innocent and disadvantaged.

              And just to be clear, actual terrorists are in no way innocents. That is not who I am talking about. Nor am I arguing for pacifism.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
      144·
      5 months ago

      And how many hostages does Israel have? Do Palestinians not have the same right, that if their family has been taken hostage, to do anything to get them back?

      You dont get it. Its clear that you dont get it.

      • triptrapper@lemmy.world
        8·
        5 months ago

        They get it, but they believe that some lives are less important than others. When someone holds that position I haven’t found an argument to convince them otherwise.

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
          21·
          5 months ago

          They get it, but they believe that some lives are less important than others. When someone holds that position I haven’t found an argument to convince them otherwise.

          Exactly. This is the fundamental lesson you (the royal “you”; as ‘one’) needed to learn from BLM. The history and legacy of settler colonialism and white supremacy leaves us with inherent and structural biases that means some “lives” are valued higher than others.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
          21·
          5 months ago

          When you attack someone stronger than you, it usually does not end well.

          Explaining this to the Israeli shipping companies currently bottlenecked in the Suez by Houthi rebels.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      82·
      5 months ago

      if my children or wife had been taken hostage

      The first thing I’d do is find a dozen people of the same ethnicity as the hostage taker and kill them. Then I’d send in a strike team to grab anyone I believed was affiliated with the hostage taker - coworkers, family members, social media contacts - and imprison them indefinitely. Finally, I’d bulldoze someone’s house. Doesn’t really matter whose. Just to show people I mean business.

      The difference between my opinion and yours is that you consider it incidental murder, while I consider it a war

      I’m reminded of this old Thomas Friedman quote.

      It’s important to stop for a moment here and take note of the fact that Friedman’s idea wasn’t that we specifically needed to attack Iraq. Friedman didn’t even bother to claim to Charlie Rose that there was, for example, a link between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Instead, he said that the problem is that “they” needed to see that Americans didn’t care so much about our “stock options and Hummers” that we were unwilling to make sacrifices.

      What was the “they,” exactly? Muslim extremists? Muslims in general? The Middle East as a region? Friedman casts a very wide net:

      “What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house—from Basra to Baghdad—and basically saying:

      “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?: You don’t think we care about our open society? You think this fantasy—we’re just gonna let it grow? Well, suck. On. This. That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We coulda hit Saudi Arabia… We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”