U.S. spent $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last October 7: study Premium

Record U.S. military aid to Israel amid escalating conflict in West Asia, totaling $17.9 billion, detailed in new report.

The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war on Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around West Asia, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’s attacks on Israel.

An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the October 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said. That included the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.

The report — completed before Israel opened a second front — against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated U.S. costs as the President Joe Biden’s administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.

The financial toll is on top of the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took 250 others hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes in that country in late September.

The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of U.S. wars since the September 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.

Israel — a protege of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report said.