• The US has provided Israel with the highest military aid in a single year in its history since last October.
• The US has purposefully kept the true number of military aid to Israel hidden.
The United States has spent a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the genocide in Gaza began on October 7, according to a report published on Monday.
An additional $4.86 billion has gone to stepped-up military operations in the region since October 7, including a navy-led campaign to quell attacks on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis.
The report by Brown University’s Costs of War project was released on Monday and was completed before Israel expanded the genocide into Lebanon in late September.
The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Blimes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government who has assessed the full costs of US wars since 9/11, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Israel is the biggest recipient of US military aid
Since Israel’s founding in 1948, Israel has been the biggest recipient of US military aid in history, receiving $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959.
The $17.9 billion spent since October 7 is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year, even in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Since the Obama administration, the annual amount Israel receives was set to $3.8 billion for military aid through until 2028.
Much of the weapons delivered to Israel were munitions, from artillery shells to 2000-pound bunker-busters and precision guided bombs, a lot of which have been responsible for mass civilian casualties in Gaza.
According to the study, $4 billion dollars was used to replenish Israel’s iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defence systems and to cash for rifles and jet fuel.
The United States publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, but according to researchers, it was impossible to get the full details of what the US has shipped to Israel since October 7. They have said the $17.9 billion figure is a partial figure for the year.
They cited the Biden administration’s “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”
It must be remembered that President Biden had proudly said in the past that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have” .
This thus implies that Biden’s staunch Zionist tendencies are a key reason for his pro-Israel support.
