In the first 18 days of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military killed more than 7,000 Palestinians, including nearly 3,000 children, despite growing calls from around the world for a ceasefire.But in the United States, Israel’s top ally, then-President Joe Biden cast doubt over the suffering and death count of Palestinians, as provided by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, to push back against calls for ending the brutal Israeli assault.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“What they say to me is I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” Biden said in October 2023.“But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” he said.More than two years later, as the Palestinian death toll grew tenfold, the Israeli military acknowledged that it killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, confirming the Health Ministry’s data.Rights advocates say Western officials and media outlets helped the Israeli denial of the scope of atrocities in Gaza, contributing to the dehumanisation of Palestinians.Abed Ayoub, executive director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said the US government attempted to “gaslight” the world and discredit the Health Ministry numbers.“This government played a role in that, and the Biden administration played a role in that,” he told Al Jazeera.“They laid the groundwork for the Israeli officials to do the same thing. But ultimately, at the end, you cannot keep lying about wh …
