How much military aid has the US given Israel?
Polygraph | Newsletter n°267 | 24 Sep 2024
In July, I asked “How much military aid is the US giving Israel?” The answer turned out to be $18 billion, the amount Congress appropriated and Biden approved for Israel so far in FY2024.1 Now I’m asking how much US military aid Israel has accepted since its founding. There’s a wide variance in the estimates published elsewhere, so I thought I’d crunch the numbers myself.
How much military aid has the US given Israel?
Israel started receiving US foreign assistance in 1949 but it wasn’t until 1959 that it got military aid from the United States. (The US actually had an arms embargo on Israel from 1947–48, imagine that.)
The military aid was structured as a loan until 1974, when President Nixon requested that Congress authorize emergency military grants for Israel and loans for which repayment would be waived (so effectively grants) in response to the October War. All military aid to Israel became officially grant-based beginning in 1985.
Since 1991, the US has provided Israel its military aid as a lump sum at the beginning of the year, rather than in quarterly installments like it does with other countries. This lump sum gets sent to an account in the Federal Reserve, where it collects interest. Israel has used the interest it collects off US military grants to pay down the pre-1974 US military loans.
Until this spring, the largest amount of military assistance the US provided Israel in one year was in 1979. Through the Special International Security Assistance Act, the US provided “a one time extraordinary assistance package” to Israel and Egypt after the two countries signed a peace treaty a few months earlier.
In 2024, the Biden-Harris administration enacted a record $18 billion in military aid for Israel through two bills (now Public Laws 118-47 and 118-50). Both pieces of legislation were passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden after the International Court of Justice advanced the genocide case against Israel to the next stage of deliberation, after the ICJ ordered provisional measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, and after several documented instances of Israel intentionally attacking aid workers and using US-supplied weapons in apparent war crimes in Gaza.
Adjusted for inflation, total US military aid to Israel stands at $251.2 billion. This amounts to nearly two Marshall Plans worth of military aid — estimates vary on the size of the project, but here are the amounts Congress made available for the European Recovery Program, the legislative form of the Marshall Plan:
$6.2 billion for 1948–49 ($64.8B in 2024 dollars)
$4.1 billion for 1949–50 ($41.9B in 2024 dollars)
$2.3 billion for 1950-51 ($23.5B in 2024 dollars)
Total: $12.5 billion ($130 billion in 2024 dollars, adjusted using GDP deflator)2
US military assistance to Israel spans 66 years (1959-2024). In just three years, the Biden-Harris administration has already accounted for 11% of all US military aid to Israel.3
^Alt text for screen readers: The U.S. has given Israel over $250 billion in military aid. This line chart resembles a poorly-drawn staircase and shows the cumulative value of U.S. military aid to Israel in constant 2024 dollars. Military aid to Israel began in 1959. The final value as of 2024 is $251.2 billion. Data: USAID Overseas Loans and Grants, Congressional Research Service, Public Law 118-47, Public Law 118-50. Figures adjusted using GDP deflator. More at stephensemler.com
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Alan F., Andrew R., Bart B., BeepBoop, Bill S., Byron D., Chris G., David S.,* David V.,* Francis M.,Frank R., Gary W., George C., [Podcast by George]Hans S., Irene B., James H., James N., Jcowens004, Jerry S., Joe R., John A., Joseph B., Kheng L., Linda B., Linda H., Lora L., Marie R., Matthew H.,* Megan., Meghan W., Nick B., Omar D.,* Peter M., Philip L., Rosemary K., Silversurfer7, Spookspice2, Springseep, Theresa A., Themadking724, Tim C., [Orca Cascadia]Tony L., Tony T. Viviane A.
* = founding member
-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)
The amounts in this analysis refer to unclassified grant obligations and loan authorizations except for fiscal year 2024, which refer to military aid appropriations. These appropriations represent the estimated value of cash and in-kind grants ultimately obligated for military aid to Israel.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics provides a similar estimate for the cost of the plan in today’s dollars: https://www.piie.com/commentary/testimonies/lessons-past-ukrainian-recovery-marshall-plan-ukraine
The Biden-Harris administration is responsible for the enacted budgets between fiscal years 2022–24; the budget for 2021 was passed under Trump and the one for 2025 hasn’t been enacted yet.