Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

The US normally gives Israel around $3 billion dollars a year to buy our weapons -- they are in fact required to spend it on buying weapons from US defense industry. It's kind of an, um, gift certificate.

This year they gave Israel $18 billion, so much more than usual.

In one sense, all of this is actually a jobs program for the US defense industry, since all that money is required to turn around as weapons purchases from US companies.

Even $18 billion is less than 1% of the US non-military budget, this isn't the reason we "can't afford" the USFS, or the reason to stop giving weapons to Israel -- the US certainly can afford both. (The reason to stop supplying Israel is that those weapons are actually destabilizing the region and encouraging violence and gross human rights violations).

But, no, Israel "buys" US weapons with US money, they are indeed a gift.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/USspendingIs...

View on HN

I think two different accounting methods are being conflated here which leads to the huge $3B vs $18B difference. Congress periodically authorizes spending for military aid to Israel and other countries. Later, the executive branch actually disburses that aid. In recent years, the US has on average given Israel $3B. This year, congress authorized an additional $18B to be disbursed through 2026 - which is what recent news stories about US giving Israel $18B are referring to, as far as I know. You would end up double-counting every dollar, if you did the math that way on an ongoing basis.

But if you know of a clean source of data on the actual amount of aid provided each year, that would be useful. I’d guess the number this year would be a lot more than $3B given the physical reality of tons of expensive offensive and defense missiles fired.

OK good point that the $18 billion is not all to be spent this year, thanks for correction, I didn't realize that, it is good to be clear! The best source i have for understanding this stuff is the study from professors at Brown University I linked above, but I haven't read/assimilated the whole thing yet.

But my main point is we DO give Israel money to buy our weapons, they are indeed a gift. I don't know if Israel spends any of their own budget on US weapons -- my guess would be very little, because they would _rather_ be funding their own Israeli domestic defense industry (which is of course quite developed), they spend our military aid $$ on US defense industry because it is required as a condition of the gift.

(There was a time in the past, when Israel, alone of all military aid recipients, was allowed to spend a portion of military aid on their own domestic defense industry, I guess becuase the US wanted to support the develpment of that specially among all other recipients of US military aid. It worked, Israel now sells $billions of weapons to autocratic Arab regimes in the middle-east and north africa: Notably Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco. Saudi Arabia would love in on that too. But those provisions expired a few years ago, now all US military aid to Israel has to be spent on weapons from the US, just like other US military aid recipients.)

Good to know and thanks for that link. I am curious why this was downvoted, is that not a trustworthy resource?

It's not downvoted.

It prob got initially downvoted and then later up-voted just cause it's so political, and i mentioned my personal support for ending US weapons supply to Israel, and people vote based on their political agreement or disagreement with sentiments, explicit or implied, but here I was explicit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com