Total U.S. aid to Israel: at least $114 Billion

$56 billion in military grants, $1.5 billion in immigration aid, $17 billion in falafel options... okay, that last one is made up.

A study by the Washington Report on Middle East affairs has calculated that the conservative, defencible US-dollar estimate of total American aid to Israel since Israel's creation in 1948 is $114 billion, at least half of which is military aid (free or subsidized planes, tanks and automobiles, etc) and most of the rest of which are the yearly wire transfers from the American treasury right into Israel's.

The study notes a few caveats regarding why the $114bn is probably an understatement:

"It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss."

"It must be emphasized that this analysis is a conservative, defensible accounting of U.S. direct aid to Israel, NOT of Israel’s cost to the U.S. or the American taxpayer, nor of the benefits to Israel of U.S. aid. The distinction is important, because the indirect or consequential costs suffered by the U.S. as a result of its blind support for Israel exceed by many times the substantial amount of direct aid to Israel."

The notes of the report cite for further reading an earlier WRMEA article (from 2003) by Thomas R. Stauffer, "The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion."