The Quincy Institute’s ‘Costs of War’ Report Misses the Real Return on America’s Alliance with Israel

The Claim: “$21.7 Billion in U.S. Aid Enables Israeli Genocide”

October 7 — the second anniversary of Hamas’s massacre — the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft released a Costs of War paper accusing the United States of bankrolling Israeli “war crimes” through $21.7 billion in military aid.

Author William Hartung claims that “without U.S. financing, weapons, and political support, the IDF could not have done the damage they have done in Gaza.”

That charge collapses on inspection.

1. Fuzzy Math and Misleading Timing

Hartung’s headline number blends disbursed funds and future obligations.

The Congressional Research Service explains that U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF) commitments are multi-year and often drawn down gradually. By treating planned spending as if it had already occurred, the Quincy paper inflates the impression of immediate transfers. It even adds unrelated U.S. deployments near Yemen and Iran as “costs of Israel’s war,” an inference no Pentagon document supports.

Result: a $31–33 billion “total” created by accounting sleight of hand, not by actual Treasury outlays.

2. Aid That Never Leaves America

Under FMF rules, about 75 percent of Israel’s U.S. military aid must be spent in the United States — soon to be 100 percent by 2028 under the Obama-era MOU.

When Israel “purchases” JDAM kits or F-35 parts, the money flows to U.S. manufacturers:

• Boeing Defense, St. Charles MO (JDAM guidance kits)

• General Dynamics OTS (bomb bodies)

• Lockheed Martin (F-35 components)

Thus FMF dollars circle back into American payrolls.

According to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, FMF “strengthens U.S. security by promoting American jobs and sustaining our defense industrial base.”

Even critics concede the money doesn’t leave U.S. soil.

3. Strategic Return on Investment

Israel’s frontline use of American systems provides a real-world laboratory for U.S. weapons under combat conditions.

Performance data from Israeli F-35 missions, JDAM targeting, and Iron Dome intercepts feeds directly into U.S. doctrine and system upgrades.

The partnership also yields high-value intelligence on Iranian drone and missile programs — information that protects U.S. forces across CENTCOM.

In short, Washington gets combat data, deterrence, and alliance leverage in return for dollars that mostly stay home.

4. Casualty Figures Without Context

Hartung relies on Gaza’s “Health Ministry” — a Hamas-run agency — for his death counts and repeats the word genocide as if it were settled law.

Even Reuters and U.N. OCHA acknowledge the ministry makes no distinction between fighters and civilians.

Israeli estimates place Hamas combatant deaths at roughly one-third to one-half of total fatalities — a point omitted entirely.

Calling Israel’s counter-offensive “genocide” on the anniversary of an actual genocide attempt by Hamas is not analysis; it’s propaganda.

5. The Ideological Lens

The Quincy Institute, funded by the Open Society Foundations and the Charles Koch Foundation, unites left- and right-wing isolationists behind the idea that America’s alliances are the root of war.
Hartung’s career—formerly at the Center for International Policy—has been devoted to portraying every U.S. arms transfer as complicity in violence.
The October 7 release date, chosen precisely two years after Hamas’s mass murder of Israeli civilians, underscores the moral inversion at work.

6. What the Report Leaves Out

• Co-production: The Iron Dome interceptor program now has U.S. assembly lines run by Raytheon in Arizona.

• Oversight: Every major arms sale is posted publicly on DSCA’s Major Arms Sales page and can be blocked by Congress within 15–30 days.

• Public support: A Gallup poll (2024) found the majority of Americans favor continued military aid to Israel.

None of that appears in Hartung’s paper.

The Reality

U.S. military aid to Israel is not a blank check for destruction; it is a carefully audited mechanism that reinforces American industry and strategy.

If Washington halted it tomorrow, factories in Missouri and Florida would fall silent long before the IDF did.

Hartung claims to “follow the money,” but he stops at the water’s edge — ignoring where the dollars actually end up: in American paychecks.

Conclusion

The true “cost of war” is not our partnership with Israel; it is the cost of pretending that Hamas, Iran, and their proxies can be deterred by disarming our allies.

Quincy’s arithmetic is political, not financial.

Its moral accounting comforts the self-righteous, but it shortchanges American workers, American security, and the truth.