How Much the War in Israel has Cost You.
Thirty Two billion, an incomprehensible number. If you spent one dollar every single second of every day for one thousand years you still wouldn't get there. 32 billion dollars is how much money the United States has given to Israel in the last two years.
To understand why Israel is fighting in the Middle East according to social studies teacher Mr. Tivin, "You can only understand in the historical conflict of border disputes." In 1948 the United Nations created the nation of Israel in the Jewish holy land, so they could have somewhere to live after WW2. The 6 day war gave Israel a start to claiming more territory on the West Bank. Israel believes they have the right to more land, Palestine believes they have the right is Israel's land."
To put that number into perspective, there is approximately 745,000 homeless people counted in January of 2025 in the U.S. and each one cost the tax payer an average of $83,000 per year. When Mr. Tivin was asked about this he said "we have a moral responsibility to find the outcome with the least amount of suffering." I think a better idea would be to use 25 of the 32 billion dollars in the US. That way Israel is still getting aid from us, and we can keep the 25 billion dollars to better our country. We could use the money to reform welfare programs, create government funded rehab facilities, back to work programs, job training classes, city jobs, and so much more.
An American citizen died in Israel during a skirmish in 2022. Shireen Abu Akleh was the American citizen that died was a journalist reporting on the West Bank. She was a Palestinian American Journalist that was shot and killed by IDF soldiers during a raid on the West bank. The American embassy did an investigation, and they concluded that they could not 100% say that the shot was fired by IDF forces. They also could not conclude if the shooting was intentional or not.
Just as there are many people that oppose giving money to Israel, there are a lot that support giving money to Israel. According to Ethan Motz, class of 27’, “We should give aid to Israel because they are our ally. Just the way we’d expect them to give us aid if we were in a conflict. Especially that close to home.” They have a point, we give lots of money to countries that are in conflict, even some that are not as strong allies as Israel is. Israel gives a the U.S. a safe place in the Middle East to run operations, trade routes, and we swap a lot of classified and declassified intelligence.
In conclusion, even though they make some good points, I believe that we spend way too much on foreign aid especially to Israel. Israel absolutely takes the better half of the deal, and American citizens are the ones taking the hit. We have other allies in the Middle East that give us the same benefits as Israel and don’t cost us billions of dollars.