Much of the arsenal supplied by the United States is munitions, including artillery shells and 2,000-pound bombs.
The United States spent $22.76 billion to support Israel’s war on Gaza and operations against the Houthis in Yemen, according to a report from Brown University’s Watson Institute.
The $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the Gaza war began a year ago is the highest annual total on record, according to the report.
Aid to Israel is a mix of military financing, arms sales and transfers from U.S. weapons stockpiles, according to the report, which is part of the institute’s War Costs Project.
Much of the arsenal delivered by the United States is munitions, the report said, including artillery shells and 2,000-pound (907 kg) bombs.
Unlike publicly documented U.S. military aid to Ukraine, details of some U.S. military shipments to Israel are more elusive, so the $17.9 billion figure is incomplete, according to Brown researchers.
They cited U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration’s “efforts to conceal the total amount of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvers.”
Israel, the United States’ most powerful ally in the Middle East, is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, with $251.2 billion adjusted for inflation since 1959, according to the report.
Still, the $17.9 billion spent since October 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, constitutes by far the largest military aid sent to Israel in a year.
In addition to aid to Israel, the United States also spent $4.86 billion on operations in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East. The United States and the United Kingdom have been carrying out air attacks on Houthi positions in Yemen since January, after the rebel group began attacking shipping in the seas around the country. The Houthis say these attacks target ships linked to Israel and support Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s war financing increasingly divides Americans amid rising civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon, with weapons experts pointing out that U.S.-funded munitions are likely being used by the Israeli military to hitting tent camps and schools.
In July, 12 former U.S. government officials warned that U.S. arms shipments to Israel made the country complicit in the destruction of Gaza.
“US diplomatic cover and the continued flow of weapons to Israel ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza,” said the officials, including former members of the Department of Defense. State and the US Army, in a joint statement.
While occasionally raising concerns about Israel’s conduct of the war and briefly suspending the deployment of some heavy bombs in May, Biden has strongly supported Israel’s war effort and refused to place conditions on American military aid.
“No administration has helped Israel as much as I have,” the US president said on October 4.
