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(JNS) — Washington has no evidence that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified during a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee about the 2025 defense budget.

About a dozen and a half anti-Israel protesters, who disrupted the beginning of the nearly three-hour hearing, were removed from the room.

“I want to address what the protesters raised earlier: Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Austin.

“We don’t have any evidence of genocide,” Austin replied. “We don’t have evidence of that to my knowledge.” 

Austin also denied a standing claim of anti-Israel protesters, that the Biden administration has “greenlit” and is complicit in an Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

“I absolutely did not,” Austin said. “I would remind everybody that what happened on Oct. 7 was absolutely horrible—numbers of Israeli citizens killed, and then a couple of hundred Israeli citizens taken hostage and American citizens as well.”

Austin’s response came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said at a Boston-area mosque on Friday that there is proof that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinians.

“If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” she told attendees at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Mass. on April 5.

A spokesperson for the senator told Politico that Warren meant to refer to “the ongoing legal process at the International Court of Justice, not sharing her views on whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.”

Warren, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, did not use the word “genocide” in her questions and statements during the hearing when describing Israel’s military operations against Hamas.

She did appear to cite official Hamas casualty statistics when probing Austin about a potential Israeli operation in Rafah.

“Since October, Israeli strikes have killed over 30,000 Palestinians, the majority of them are women and children. Rafah has become the latest refuge of Palestinian civilians and is now home to more than 1.4 million people,” Warren said. “Secretary Austin, do you think an attack on Rafah that kills another 30,000 civilians would enhance either U.S. or Israeli security?”

There had been “far too many civilian casualties” in the conflict, Austin said. He told Warren that he had relayed that message to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

“This is a point that I have stressed with my counterpart on a number of occasions, just as recently as yesterday, and it cannot be, going forward, what we’ve seen in the past in terms of the type of activities that we’ve seen in Gaza City and Khan Younis,” Austin said. (A Pentagon readout of Austin’s call with Gallant yesterday did not reference Palestinian civilian casualties.)