Sharon Zhang
Truthout / June 27, 2024
This amounts to nearly $25 million in weapons and military assistance sent to Israel each day.
New reporting finds that the U.S. has sent $6.5 billion in military assistance to Israel since October — an enormous, previously undisclosed sum underscoring how the U.S. is nearly single handedly allowing Israel to carry out its ongoing extermination campaign against Palestinians in Gaza.
According to an anonymous senior Biden administration official, who spoke to The Washington Post, nearly $3 billion was approved in May alone.
That is the same month that Israel was embarking on its Rafah raid that President Joe Biden previously said would be his “red line” — and the same month that Biden had made a public pledge to withhold certain 2,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs if Israel invaded Rafah. It’s unclear if the May figure is included in the $6.5 billion total.
This is a staggering amount of weapons and military assistance sent in such a short amount of time.
On average, over the past 264 days of Israel’s genocide, the assistance provided to Israel amounts to nearly $25 million per day, or over $700 million per month. The Post previously reported that the U.S. sent Israel over 100 weapons shipments between October and March, amounting to one shipment for every 1.5 days.
Historically, the U.S. has always been the largest booster of Israel’s military, having given above $3 billion in aid every year in recent decades, amounting to tens of thousands of weapons.
The Post reports that the administration official disclosed the number as “an indication of the depth and complexity of U.S. support for Israel.” “This is a massive, massive undertaking,” the official said.
The report comes after an embarrassing snafu last week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed outrage that the U.S. is withholding weapons from Israel, a claim that the U.S. strongly refuted. On the contrary, the U.S. emphasized, it has kept weapons flowing to Israel through all of its horrific massacres of Palestinians, likely using those weapons.
In meetings this week with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, officials from both countries smoothed out the issue, with U.S. officials assuring Israeli officials that they have taken many measures to send Israel weapons as quickly as possible, including bypassing Congress multiple times to do so and sending weapons “off the shelf” to expedite the process, as Axios reported.
During Gallant and his delegation’s visit, U.S. arms experts went through “hundreds of separate items” with Israeli officials in order to reassure them of their commitment to Israel’s war on Palestine, The Post reports.
Israeli officials have emphasized many times that U.S. support is crucial for them to continue carrying out their genocidal invasion and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Gallant told reporters on Tuesday that Israel’s “ties with the United States are the second-most important element for Israel’s security,” with Israel’s military being the first, per The Washington Post report. “We need American diplomatic and political support, power projection, supply of munition, and more.”
The arms pipeline is continuing to flow despite droves of experts saying that U.S. officials are openly skirting U.S. law by sending Israel weapons, and despite many reports finding that the U.S. holds direct complicity in countless war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians in recent months.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor
