House passes annual defense bill with hundreds of millions for Israel

The bill also bars Tricare—the military’s health-care program—from paying for any medical procedure that could cause sterilization as part of the treatment of gender dysphoria in children, including sex-change operations.

By JNS

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the $895 billion annual defense bill on Wednesday with hundreds of millions of dollars for Israel.

Formally titled the “Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025,” the legislation includes $500 million for U.S.-Israel missile-defense cooperation, $47.5 million for U.S.-Israel cooperation on emerging technologies and $80 million for the U.S.-Israeli anti-tunneling initiative.

It also includes a provision that would bar the U.S. Department of Defense from citing casualty statistics from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

“In making assessments of casualties and fatalities during hostilities, the Department of Defense may not cite as authoritative in public communications, fatality figures that are derived by United States-designated terrorist organizations, governmental entities controlled by United States-designated terrorist organizations, or any sources that rely on figures provided by United States-designated terrorist organizations,” the act says.

The U.S. State Department designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.

The Pentagon faced scrutiny regarding the use of Hamas’s statistics after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin cited them during congressional testimony in February. They have been repeated by other members of the Biden administration, including U.S. President Joe Biden.

In June, an Associated Press investigation revealed that Hamas’s claims about the number of Palestinian casualties were contradicted by its own data, and the United Nations nearly halved its casualty estimates back in May of the number of women and children killed in the conflict after more closely scrutinizing Hamas’s claims.

Non-Israel provisions of the 1,813-page defense bill include an overall 1% increase in U.S. defense spending over fiscal year 2024 and a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted troops.

The bill also bars Tricare—the military’s health-care program—from paying for any medical procedure that could cause sterilization as part of the treatment of gender dysphoria in children, including sex-change operations.

The defense spending package passed 281-140, with 81 Democrats supporting the bill and 16 Republicans opposing.

The vote split the Democratic leadership, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Democratic Caucus chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) and Democratic Caucus vice chair Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) voting “yea” while Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), assistant Democratic leader Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) joined most Democrats in voting “nay.”

The 16 Republicans who voted against the bill included some of the House’s most conservative members, including former Freedom Caucus chairmen Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Bob Good (R-Va.).

The bill will now proceed to the Senate.