What is Rashida Tlaib furious about now?

Tlaib doesn’t think the Hamas Ministry of Health figures should be doubted.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Frontpage Magazine

Rashida Tlaib (D-Khan Younis), that “unpleasant in all respects” congresswoman, she of the wide-mouthed bass aspect, is furious yet again.

She is angry this time because the House of Representatives has passed a bill prohibiting the State Department from citing figures on casualties — wounded and dead Gazans — that come from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas.

After all, Hamas is a terrorist group whose operatives have raped, tortured, and killed people.

Why wouldn’t its operatives lie as well? Tlaib, however, doesn’t think the Hamas figures should be doubted.

More on Tlaib’s latest diatribe can be found here:

“Rashida Tlaib Fumes Over US House Vote to Prohibit State Department From Citing Hamas Casualty Figures,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, June 27, 2024:

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a measure that would prohibit the US State Department from using funds from the international affairs budget to cite casualty figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, sparking backlash from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)….

Tlaib lambasted her peers in the House for the vote, suggesting that they harbor deeply-ingrained “racism” against Palestinians. She dismissed the amendment as an effort to “dehumanize” Palestinian people.

No, Rashida mavourneen (may I call you “mavourneen”?) There is no “racism” here. Hamas, you see, has been known to lie. Often.

It lied when it claimed that the IDF carried out a “massacre in Jenin,” in which 500 “innocent civiians” were supposedly killed.

It turned out that there had been no massacre; that 52 people were killed and of those 52, at least 45 were terrorists. And the IDF lost 23 of its own men during that so-called massacre.

And it lied when it claimed last fall that an Israeli rocket had hit the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, “killing 500 civilians.”

Investigation revealed that it was in fact a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that misfired, fell short, and landed not on the hospital, but on a parking lot next door.

And there were not “500 people killed” but about 50. How many of those 50 were Hamas operatives is not known. There are many other instances of Hamas lying.

Take the denial by its leaders on October 8 that there had been any atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, either at the kibbutzim or at the Nova Music Festival. A little googling will lead you to many of them.

“Since 1948, there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence,” Tlaib said before the vote.

“My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll.”

The Gaza Health Ministry — which is run by the Hamas terrorist group in control of the Palestinian enclave — manages the health care and medical services in the Gaza Strip.

Experts have cast doubt on the reliability of their figures for systematically overcounting the number of casualties and not distinguishing between civilians and terrorists as part of a strategy to tarnish Israel’s public image.

Hamas does not distinguish between civilians and terrorists in the figures it provides the media via the Gaza Health Ministry because it wants the world to believe that they were almost all civilians.

But then Hamas finally had to provide a breakdown giving the total numbers of women and children who had been killed.

Since February, Hamas had maintained that more than 9,500 women and 14,500 children had been killed so far in Gaza.

The UN had been reporting similar figures for nearly two months. Y

et on May 8, the numbers reported by fell to fewer than 5,000 women and 8,000 children — a reduction of more than 11,000 fatalities in all.

The UN did not call attention to the change, which was buried in the fine print of one of its many updates on Gaza. But a handful of journalists noticed.

The first wave of headlines put the UN on the defensive: “United Nations halves estimate of women and children in Gaza,” and “UN revises Gaza death toll,” with many more along the same lines.

Hamas first tried to make the media report that “37,000 people have been killed, almost all of them women and children.”

And for some — the careless and the credulous — that strategy worked.

I have heard NPR reporters, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and AOC, all claim that so far “there have been 37,000 women and children killed in Gaza.”

They continue to overlook the UN’s admission that the true figure was fewer than 5,000 women and 8,000 children killed, a figure that Israel continues to dispute.

The IDF has calculated that by that time — early May — it had killed 16,000 Hamas combatants.

It also added to this figure the number of Gazans who die a natural death each month — 800 — or 6400 during the eight months of fighting.

The total of the two is 22,400.

And when we add the revised figures now accepted by the UN, of 5,000 women and 8,000 children killed so far in Gaza, to the numbers both of combatants killed, and of those people in Gaza who died a natural death, we arrive at a figure of 35,400, which is close to the figure of 37,000, the number that Hamas wanted the world to believe consisted only of women and children.

death countGaza Ministry of HealthHamasRashida Tlaib