What $23 Billion to Israel Could Have Paid For, Instead of Bombs by Mehdi Hasan
In a new ‘Vibe Check,’ Kat Abughazaleh counts the ways the US could have spent its money, rather than fueling the destruction of Gaza.
We’ve given Israel almost $23 billion in military aid over the last year. So I did some math, and here are a few other ways we could have spent that money. With $22,760,000,000, we could fund FEMA’s entire response and recovery budget 82 times over, or the American Red Cross seven times, or Doctors Without Borders 30 times.
Alternatively, we could have just paid for every U.S. public library for a year and a half. Remember Operation Warp Speed when we created a vaccine for a pandemic in less than a year? Yeah, with this money, we could not only do another one of those, but also fund St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital until 2029. But of course, instead,
we’ve spent almost nine times more on bombs for Israel than we have for UN peacekeeping. That money could have paid for either a year of Mississippi or four years of Delaware. I was going to talk about different sectors of the GDP using government data,
but the tables I was looking for were actually being discontinued due to budget restraints. $22,760,000,000 is more than seven times the gross revenue of Avatar and more than the entire GDP of Lebanon and 83 other countries. That money could have paid my cat’s adoption fee 151 million times.
Now, there are only about 6.3 million animals in US shelters right now. So we could adopt every single one of them and buy each of them a PS5, which they can’t even use. They don’t have thumbs. But technically, we could do it and still have half the budget left over.
In a new ‘Vibe Check,’ Kat Abughazaleh counts the ways the US could have spent its money, rather than fueling the destruction of Gaza.
OCT 08, 2024
The United States spent at least $22.76 billion funding Israel’s military operations in the year following the Oct. 7 attacks, a new analysis from Brown University has found. And that’s a conservative estimate.
This continued support comes despite international outcry over the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza. Another report from Brown’s Cost of War project estimates well over 100,000 people have died in Gaza during the same period.
In her latest Vibe Check video, Zeteo contributor Kat Abughazaleh, with her typical mix of snark and irreverence, explores some of the countless ways the Biden administration could have used that money to address pressing (and some less pressing) needs:
- We could fund FEMA’s entire response and recovery budget this year 82 times over.
- Or Doctors Without Borders 30 times.
- We could fund every US public library for a year and a half.
- Or we could also just give every American $65.
“$22 billion is a lot of money and it’s coming from your pocket.” Abughazaleh notes. “So think about it: How do you want your money to be spent? ”
Watch the video above and let us know what you think that money should have been used for.
(zeteo@substack.com)
