As Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza and now threatens to unleash its aggression across the Middle East, the U.S. has sent Israeli forces a record $17.9 billion in military assistance, a new report released on the one-year mark of the genocide finds.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War, this is the highest amount of military aid sent to Israel in a year since the U.S. began the practice in 1959. Including the amount spent on U.S. operations related to Israel’s genocide and aggression, like operations against Houthis in Yemen, the U.S. has spent at least $22.7 billion since last year, the report finds.
This staggering figure represents only part of the total amount of assistance the U.S. has sent to support Israel’s attacks since October 7, 2023.
The $17.9 billion figure is derived from the $14.1 billion in military aid sent to Israel in April by Congress and the White House, on top of the annual $3.8 billion that the U.S. sends to Israel. However, the report authors note that there is a huge deficit in accounting because of the extreme opacity officials are maintaining around the shipments, unlike the detailed accounting of shipments to Ukraine, for instance.
In other words, though the total amount sent to Israel is astoundingly high and widely opposed by the public, U.S. officials are keeping the true figure under lock and key. The $17.9 billion figure doesn’t account for the Biden administration’s at least 100 weapons shipments to Israel that fall under the reporting threshold for such transfers, per a Washington Post report from March, or the shipments that may have come after that.
There is also tens of billions of dollars of promised assistance and assistance that was seemingly already promised before Israel’s total destruction of Gaza. The report notes that there is roughly $23 billion worth of active military transfers and sales between the U.S. and Israel, while the U.S. has also authorized Israel to access a U.S. weapons stockpile in Israel that contained up to $4.4 billion worth of weapons before October 7 of last year.
These sales have massively benefited U.S. weapons contractors like Boeing and General Dynamics, as the report notes, which develop the fighter jets and bombs that Israel has been using to bomb Gaza, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank.
The amount of assistance is only slated to grow as Israel escalates its aggression in Lebanon; in fact, Israeli officials have said that their military campaigns are made possible by U.S. assistance. The Biden administration is now pushing a $20.3 billion weapons deal with Israel. Though there is some pushback against the deal, Congress is likely to pass the package, providing Israel with a humongous tranche of weapons to bolster its military for years to come.
The genocide and related military activities are economically costly to the U.S. and the world. According to Costs of War, shipping costs have risen, costing the maritime trade an estimated $2.1 billion — costs that may be getting passed down to American consumers.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy