How much US taxpayer money goes to Israel?
The Middle East state receives the largest amount of aid from the world's most powerful country and enjoys privileges no other country does
By Kyle Fitzgerald and Ellie Sennett in Washington 1/31/25
The second Donald Trump administration presents the US with another opportunity to send billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, an unknown amount of which will be funded by taxpaying citizens.
The US is currently in the final three years of its current Memorandum of Understanding with its ally in the region. Under the Obama administration in 2018, the nations entered an agreement valued at $38 billion over 10 years (or $3.8 billion a year). That figure, representing 0.1 per cent of the US budget of the year it came into effect, exceeded the previous 10-year agreement of $30 billion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with US president Barack Obama in New York in September 2016, the month the countries agreed to a $38 billion aid package for Israel over 10 years. EPA
The current agreement includes $33 billion in foreign military financing funds – which allows Israel to buy US-made weapons - and $5 billion commitment towards Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system.
With the current arrangement set to expire at the end of the 2028 fiscal year, Mr Trump has the chance to negotiate a new deal, although the actual budget approval will go through Congress.
Part of the funding will be provided by US taxpayers, the largest source of income for the federal government. For a variety of factors, it is almost impossible to say just how much taxpayer money is appropriated for Israeli security assistance.
US support for Israel has come under scrutiny over the past 15 months as Israel waged war on Gaza, killing tens of thousands of people and causing widespread destruction in response to Hamas’ deadly attack on October 7, 2023. Progressive lawmakers, university students and citizens across the country spoke out, campaigned and staged protests and campus shutdowns, calling for disinvestment from Israel and an end of what they said was US complicity in the war through funding and weapons deliveries.
The ruins of Rafah caused by Israeli bombing during the war on Gaza, seen in January 2025 after the 42-day ceasefire took effect. AFP
Less than a month before the 2024 US election, the then-secretary of state Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel in a letter that weapons shipments could be affected unless it changed a “deteriorating situation in Gaza”. Except for one specific shipment, no change was made to Washington’s pipeline of support to Israel and there was no change in the country’s approach to the war.
Israel has received the largest cumulative amount of foreign assistance from the US since its founding in 1948 to date compared to any other country. Foreign assistance can include economic, humanitarian and military aid among other varieties.
Former US secretary of state Antony Blinken in October 2024, the month he called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Reuters
Israel also enjoys what is called cashflow financing, which allows it to negotiate major arms deals with US defence manufacturers and schedule payment over long periods. This permits Israel to finance multiyear arms purchases before receiving appropriations from Congress. Cashflow financing has allowed Israel to procure US weapons, including combat aircraft, according to the Congressional Research Service. Jordan is the only other nation that can benefit from cashflow financing with the US, but in a more limited capacity.
"Israel is the only security assistance partner who's able to enjoy that kind of latitude," said Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at Centre for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
"We've seen time and time again ... where, despite the preponderance of evidence of Israel carrying out the war in Gaza in ways that contravene international law, they've never been subject to some of the provisions in US law that would trigger a suspension of weapons delivery."
The remains of 47 Palestinians that were taken and later released by Israel are committed for burial in Rafah in March 2024. AFP
Israel is also eligible to use its yearly foreign military financing allocation to obtain defence items and services, training through the foreign military sales system, direct commercial contract agreements and offshore procurement, according to the State Department.
Why does Israel receive so much foreign assistance from the US?
The US has a special relationship with Israel – even when compared to its other allies around the world. The US was the first country to recognise Israel, just 11 minutes after the state was founded, and Washington frequently refers to that relationship as its most important in the Middle East.
US president Harry S Truman, left, receives a Torah from Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, during a visit to Washington on May 25, 1948. Getty Images
The most important reasons for the US-Israel alliance is "are the overlapping strategic interests”, said William Wechsler, senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programme and a former official in Bill Clinton's administration.
But in addition to that, there is a “cultural connection that is very important to many Americans, and that is the reason why a great number of Americans disproportionately pay attention to Israel", he said.
But that ironclad relationship has had its ebbs and flows, Mr Wechsler said.
“In fact, Israel's strongest relationship in its early days was with France and with Russia, which also recognised Israel right at the outset. That started to change really, in the wake of the war in 1967,” he said.
Israeli troops advance against Egyptian soldiers at the start of the Six-Day War in June 1967 near Rafah. The Soviet Union assisted Egypt and Syria against Israel in the war. Getty Images
A steady pipeline of financial, military assistance in particular, has run through periods of political tension. And Israel remains the single largest recipient of cumulative US aid, with more than $300 billion inflation-adjusted dollars between its establishment in 1948 and 2024, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank.
By comparison Egypt, the second-largest recipient, has received about $150 billion in that time, according to CFR.
US aid to Israel has only increased since the war on Gaza. A recent study published by Brown University found that Congress and the Biden administration funnelled “at least $22.76 billion and counting”, a “conservative” estimate of the total amount of approved security assistance funding between October 7, 2023 and September 30, 2024.
That figure includes an estimated $17.9 billion in military assistance - but researchers cautioned that it is “impossible” to detail the full extent of funding, citing the Biden administration’s “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic manoeuvring".
A US military aircraft delivers armoured vehicles to Israel in October 2023. Getty Images
For example, the Biden administration has made at least 100 arms deals with Israel since October 2023 that “fell below the value that would have triggered the requirement to notify Congress of the details”.
How much of the average citizen’s taxes go to Israel?
Just like it is difficult to calculate the exact number of US dollars sent to support Israel, it is nearly impossible to figure out how much money comes out of the average American’s pay cheque to the US ally.
The Centre for American Progress provided a rough breakdown on what a bill to the average taxpayer might look like.
The exercise found there are about 268 million adults in the US. Using the existing agreement between the US and Israel and accounting for individual taxpayers paying approximately 77 per cent of tax money the US can spend, the think tank found the average theoretical taxpayer has paid $11.25 a year since the war in Gaza began.
Voters cast their ballots at a polling site in New York on Election Day in November 2024. EPA
But Ms McManus at the Centre for American Progress cautions that this is an oversimplification and the exact number is impossible to know.
“It’s actually very difficult to trace dollars … because there’s no such thing as an average taxpayer,” she said.
Why is it difficult to determine the exact number?
Even at a taxpayer level, it is difficult to ascertain just how much goes towards Israel because couples could file their taxes jointly and corporations also pay taxes.
Despite some campaigner suggestions that taxpayer money being sent to Israel could go to domestic issues such as health care and infrastructure, there are many reasons why this is unlikely to happen.
A demonstration calling for the end to Israel's war on Gaza is held in Washington in July 2024 as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress. Reuters
No single piece of legislation establishes the annual federal budget. Rather, Congress makes spending and tax decisions through a variety of legislative actions, with distinctions between approvals for “mandatory” and “discretionary” funding. “Defence discretionary” funding, for example, accounts for about 12 per cent of the federal budget, according to 2024 analysis from the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The biggest roadblock towards finding an exact number in this calculation is deficit spending.
As a country, the US spends more money than it takes in.
“It’s not like balancing a chequebook,” Ms McManus said.
In other words, no single US government expenditure necessarily comes at the expense of another. If there was a political will from US lawmakers – and lobbyists entrenched in the American political process – to pass universal healthcare or more food stamps for increasingly hard-pressed American families, it would happen regardless of whether Israel was receiving aid.
The US deficit widened to $711 billion in the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year, the Treasury Department reported on January 21, representing a 39 per cent increase from the same period last year.
In addition to spending on programmes like defence, social security and health care, US tax dollars also go towards interest payments on the nation's debt, which has ballooned to more than $36 trillion.
But Ms McManus said that finding the exact amount of taxes the average US adult sends to Israel is a "futile exercise" and more as a cost-benefit in promoting national security, global stability and peace.
"How do we think about ensuring that the types of security assistance that we are providing to partners, much of which does make the world safer place, are done in accordance with our own laws and policies on civilian harm mitigation, on upholding human rights?"
Words Kyle Fitzgerald and Ellie Sennett
Editor Juman Jarallah
Data Isaac Arroyo
Picture editor Olive Obina
Design Nick Donaldson
Sub editor Alan McCrorie
How much US taxpayer money goes to Israel?
The Middle East state receives the largest amount of aid from the world's most powerful country and enjoys privileges no other country does
By Kyle Fitzgerald and Ellie Sennett in Washington
The second Donald Trump administration presents the US with another opportunity to send billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, an unknown amount of which will be funded by taxpaying citizens.
The US is currently in the final three years of its current Memorandum of Understanding with its ally in the region. Under the Obama administration in 2018, the nations entered an agreement valued at $38 billion over 10 years (or $3.8 billion a year). That figure, representing 0.1 per cent of the US budget of the year it came into effect, exceeded the previous 10-year agreement of $30 billion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with US president Barack Obama in New York in September 2016, the month the countries agreed to a $38 billion aid package for Israel over 10 years. EPA
The current agreement includes $33 billion in foreign military financing funds – which allows Israel to buy US-made weapons - and $5 billion commitment towards Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system.
With the current arrangement set to expire at the end of the 2028 fiscal year, Mr Trump has the chance to negotiate a new deal, although the actual budget approval will go through Congress.
Part of the funding will be provided by US taxpayers, the largest source of income for the federal government. For a variety of factors, it is almost impossible to say just how much taxpayer money is appropriated for Israeli security assistance.
US support for Israel has come under scrutiny over the past 15 months as Israel waged war on Gaza, killing tens of thousands of people and causing widespread destruction in response to Hamas’ deadly attack on October 7, 2023. Progressive lawmakers, university students and citizens across the country spoke out, campaigned and staged protests and campus shutdowns, calling for disinvestment from Israel and an end of what they said was US complicity in the war through funding and weapons deliveries.
The ruins of Rafah caused by Israeli bombing during the war on Gaza, seen in January 2025 after the 42-day ceasefire took effect. AFP
Less than a month before the 2024 US election, the then-secretary of state Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel in a letter that weapons shipments could be affected unless it changed a “deteriorating situation in Gaza”. Except for one specific shipment, no change was made to Washington’s pipeline of support to Israel and there was no change in the country’s approach to the war.
Israel has received the largest cumulative amount of foreign assistance from the US since its founding in 1948 to date compared to any other country. Foreign assistance can include economic, humanitarian and military aid among other varieties.
Former US secretary of state Antony Blinken in October 2024, the month he called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Reuters
Israel also enjoys what is called cashflow financing, which allows it to negotiate major arms deals with US defence manufacturers and schedule payment over long periods. This permits Israel to finance multiyear arms purchases before receiving appropriations from Congress. Cashflow financing has allowed Israel to procure US weapons, including combat aircraft, according to the Congressional Research Service. Jordan is the only other nation that can benefit from cashflow financing with the US, but in a more limited capacity.
"Israel is the only security assistance partner who's able to enjoy that kind of latitude," said Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at Centre for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
"We've seen time and time again ... where, despite the preponderance of evidence of Israel carrying out the war in Gaza in ways that contravene international law, they've never been subject to some of the provisions in US law that would trigger a suspension of weapons delivery."
The remains of 47 Palestinians that were taken and later released by Israel are committed for burial in Rafah in March 2024. AFP
Israel is also eligible to use its yearly foreign military financing allocation to obtain defence items and services, training through the foreign military sales system, direct commercial contract agreements and offshore procurement, according to the State Department.
Why does Israel receive so much foreign assistance from the US?
The US has a special relationship with Israel – even when compared to its other allies around the world. The US was the first country to recognise Israel, just 11 minutes after the state was founded, and Washington frequently refers to that relationship as its most important in the Middle East.
US president Harry S Truman, left, receives a Torah from Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, during a visit to Washington on May 25, 1948. Getty Images
The most important reasons for the US-Israel alliance is "are the overlapping strategic interests”, said William Wechsler, senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programme and a former official in Bill Clinton's administration.
But in addition to that, there is a “cultural connection that is very important to many Americans, and that is the reason why a great number of Americans disproportionately pay attention to Israel", he said.
But that ironclad relationship has had its ebbs and flows, Mr Wechsler said.
“In fact, Israel's strongest relationship in its early days was with France and with Russia, which also recognised Israel right at the outset. That started to change really, in the wake of the war in 1967,” he said.
Israeli troops advance against Egyptian soldiers at the start of the Six-Day War in June 1967 near Rafah. The Soviet Union assisted Egypt and Syria against Israel in the war. Getty Images
A steady pipeline of financial, military assistance in particular, has run through periods of political tension. And Israel remains the single largest recipient of cumulative US aid, with more than $300 billion inflation-adjusted dollars between its establishment in 1948 and 2024, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank.
By comparison Egypt, the second-largest recipient, has received about $150 billion in that time, according to CFR.
US aid to Israel has only increased since the war on Gaza. A recent study published by Brown University found that Congress and the Biden administration funnelled “at least $22.76 billion and counting”, a “conservative” estimate of the total amount of approved security assistance funding between October 7, 2023 and September 30, 2024.
That figure includes an estimated $17.9 billion in military assistance - but researchers cautioned that it is “impossible” to detail the full extent of funding, citing the Biden administration’s “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic manoeuvring".
A US military aircraft delivers armoured vehicles to Israel in October 2023. Getty Images
For example, the Biden administration has made at least 100 arms deals with Israel since October 2023 that “fell below the value that would have triggered the requirement to notify Congress of the details”.
How much of the average citizen’s taxes go to Israel?
Just like it is difficult to calculate the exact number of US dollars sent to support Israel, it is nearly impossible to figure out how much money comes out of the average American’s pay cheque to the US ally.
The Centre for American Progress provided a rough breakdown on what a bill to the average taxpayer might look like.
The exercise found there are about 268 million adults in the US. Using the existing agreement between the US and Israel and accounting for individual taxpayers paying approximately 77 per cent of tax money the US can spend, the think tank found the average theoretical taxpayer has paid $11.25 a year since the war in Gaza began.
Voters cast their ballots at a polling site in New York on Election Day in November 2024. EPA
But Ms McManus at the Centre for American Progress cautions that this is an oversimplification and the exact number is impossible to know.
“It’s actually very difficult to trace dollars … because there’s no such thing as an average taxpayer,” she said.
Why is it difficult to determine the exact number?
Even at a taxpayer level, it is difficult to ascertain just how much goes towards Israel because couples could file their taxes jointly and corporations also pay taxes.
Despite some campaigner suggestions that taxpayer money being sent to Israel could go to domestic issues such as health care and infrastructure, there are many reasons why this is unlikely to happen.
A demonstration calling for the end to Israel's war on Gaza is held in Washington in July 2024 as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress. Reuters
No single piece of legislation establishes the annual federal budget. Rather, Congress makes spending and tax decisions through a variety of legislative actions, with distinctions between approvals for “mandatory” and “discretionary” funding. “Defence discretionary” funding, for example, accounts for about 12 per cent of the federal budget, according to 2024 analysis from the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The biggest roadblock towards finding an exact number in this calculation is deficit spending.
As a country, the US spends more money than it takes in.
“It’s not like balancing a chequebook,” Ms McManus said.
In other words, no single US government expenditure necessarily comes at the expense of another. If there was a political will from US lawmakers – and lobbyists entrenched in the American political process – to pass universal healthcare or more food stamps for increasingly hard-pressed American families, it would happen regardless of whether Israel was receiving aid.
The US deficit widened to $711 billion in the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year, the Treasury Department reported on January 21, representing a 39 per cent increase from the same period last year.
In addition to spending on programmes like defence, social security and health care, US tax dollars also go towards interest payments on the nation's debt, which has ballooned to more than $36 trillion.
But Ms McManus said that finding the exact amount of taxes the average US adult sends to Israel is a "futile exercise" and more as a cost-benefit in promoting national security, global stability and peace.
"How do we think about ensuring that the types of security assistance that we are providing to partners, much of which does make the world safer place, are done in accordance with our own laws and policies on civilian harm mitigation, on upholding human rights?"
Words Kyle Fitzgerald and Ellie Sennett
Editor Juman Jarallah
Data Isaac Arroyo
Picture editor Olive Obina
Design Nick Donaldson
Sub editor Alan McCrorie