The Biden administration should own up to the costs of arming Israel in Gaza

Two years ago, in his speech announcing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden cited the Costs of War project at Brown University’s estimates on the costs of that war — over $2 trillion, or $300 million per day over two decades.

Last week, the Biden administration’s State Department spokesperson claimed that our latest report, an estimate on U.S. military aid to Israel and our related military build-up in the Middle East, was inaccurate. Yet when he was asked what the true costs were, he had no answer.

Why is the Biden administration so quick to dismiss credible estimates of the costs of U.S. support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza?

Our research, drawn from publicly available sources and clearly documented, shows that U.S. spending on military aid to Israel and our military buildup in the Middle East in the last year has been at least $22.76 billion, with billions more in costs yet to come.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller claimed that this estimate is inaccurate because it combines several different types of costs. But that was precisely the point: We combined U.S. military aid to Israel plus the costs of sending additional U.S. Navy ships and troops to the region in order to provide the fullest possible estimate of the true costs to U.S. taxpayers of supporting Israeli military operations.

Our estimates underscore that the U.S. is a partner in this war, not just a funder. For example, over the last year, the U.S. Navy has exchanged fire with Houthi militants every one to three days. The Houthis say their actions are taken in opposition to Israel’s operations in Gaza, and the U.S. is engaging in both defensive and offensive operations against the Houthis. If this isn’t war, then what is?

Our new report fills a gap, because so far no one has been able to piece together even a rough estimate of the dollar amount of military aid the U.S. has given Israel since Oct. 7, 2023. The answer is complicated because there are so many channels of aid, and such inconsistent and incomplete reporting on the part of the government. Our estimate is a conservative one, given how limited government reporting on military aid and military operations tied to the Gaza war has been. 

The administration’s lack of transparency on the costs of its role in supporting Israel’s military actions is in sharp contrast to its approach to arms supplies and aid to Ukraine, where every dollar and every weapons system supplied is reported to Congress and the public on a regular basis.

In Ukraine, we are helping defend a sovereign nation from attack. In the case of Israel, we are enabling a massively disproportionate response to Hamas’s brutal attacks of Oct. 7 of last year, which killed 1,200 people and took civilians hostage — over 100 of whom have not yet been released.

Since Oct. 7, the Netanyahu government has killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza alone; of those, 10,000 are estimated dead under the rubble. A group of U.S. physicians recently estimated that 62,413 people in Gaza have died of starvation this year. Israel’s government has decimated health care infrastructure in Gaza, and 5,000 more people have died from lack of access to care for chronic diseases. Still others have died from an increase in infectious diseases and lack of neonatal and maternal care. Children have been especially devastated, with nine out of 10 lacking the food they need.

Because of the indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, coupled with the blocking of deliveries of humanitarian aid, the International Court of Justice, the UN Special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories, and independent experts like Human Rights Watch founder Aryeh Neier have determined that at a minimum it is “plausible” that Israel is engaged in genocide in Gaza.

Through its failure to cut off U.S. weapons transfers to Israel to press it to accept an enduring ceasefire in Gaza and end its attacks on Lebanon, the Biden administration is complicit in Israel’s crimes, and it has done lasting damage to the United States’ status in the world. No government that is subsidizing mass slaughter in Gaza can be taken seriously when it opines on human rights or speaks of its alleged support for a “rules-based international order.”

It’s time for the Biden administration to come clean on the true human and economic costs of its continuing support for Israel’s military actions in its neighborhood. And it should carefully consider the ways that arming Israeli aggression increases the likelihood of a regional war that could drag the U.S. into a direct conflict with Iran or another adversary in the Middle East. Current U.S. policy is not only immoral. It is also a humanitarian, strategic and budgetary disaster.

William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Stephanie Savell is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and the director of Brown’s Costs of War project.