The Human Costs of the Gaza War Are Even Greater Than You Think

I am the co-author, along with Linda Bilmes and Stephen Semler, of a new paper on the costs of U.S. military aid to Israel and its parallel military buildup in the Middle East, issued this week under the auspices of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

Our results – over $22 billion in U.S. tax dollars to pay for aid to Israel and the bulking up the U.S. military presence in the region since the start of the Gaza war – have been widely disseminated, largely due to an exclusive article on our paper written by Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press.

Unfortunately, a companion paper analyzing the full humanitarian costs of the war in Gaza, issued by the Costs of War project on the same day as our paper, has received much less attention. That needs to change. The findings of the paper, by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins of Bard College, should be taken in by every policy maker in Washington, and every American who cares about the reputation and future influence of the United States.

The direct death toll in Gaza, now estimated at over 40,000 people, most of whom are not members of Hamas, and have no influence over the conduct of Hamas, is hard enough to process. It is as mind numbing as it is frightening and outrageous. But when indirect deaths are taken into account, the picture becomes even darker and more unconscionable.