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.

Stamatopoulou-Robbins estimates that as many as 67,000 Gazans may have died of starvation since the start of the war, and that over 10,000 more may not have been counted in the death toll because they are still buried in the rubble caused by U.S.-supplied aircraft and bombs. This pushes the number of people killed in the war to well over 100,000, with, sadly, more to come as disease increases in a population bereft of adequate clean water, sanitation, or access to medical care. If the bombing in Gaza stopped tomorrow, deaths caused by the conflict would continue for some time given the awful conditions people are being forced to live in.

The paper on human costs of the Gaza war is a reminder of the debate over whether Israel’s war on Gaza constitutes genocide. The International Court of Justice has said that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide. Other experts, like Human Rights Watch founder Aryeh Neier are less equivocal, pointing to Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid flows into and through Gaza as a clear marker of a genocide.

Whether one calls the war in Gaza a genocide or a series of severe violations of the laws of war, the killing needs to stop now. Due to its ongoing role in financing and arming Israel, the United States has more leverage over Israel’s conduct than any other nation, if Washington is willing to use it. It’s possible that Netanyahu would try to carry on in any case, but without access to U.S. funds, weapons, and logistical and maintenance support his military reach would be more limited, and his ability to spark a regional war, now well under way, would be stymied.

Further escalation is a distinct and dangerous possibility. The decision to deploy a battery of U.S. THAAD anti-missile systems to Israel, along with 100 U.S. support personnel, is the next step in that process. How will the Biden administration respond if one of those U.S. troops is killed by a missile launched by Hamas or Hezbollah?

In essence, President Biden has given the power over whether or not the war escalates to Benjamin Netanyahu. When Israel attacks Hezbollah or Iran, the Biden administration pledges to help defend it against the inevitable counter-attack. This policy of “Netanyahu right or wrong,” which rewards his reckless behavior with yeet more support, must stop.

Without a sharp reversal in U.S. policy, the human and economic costs of supporting Israel’s war could easily spiral out of control. This is not a precise analogy, but the current situation reminds me of the early days of the Bush administration’s 2003 intervention in Iraq, when the White House put out an estimate that the war would cost “only” $50 billion. The final price tag was at least $1 trillion, with further costs to come due to the need to take care of veterans of that war for the rest of their lives. This doesn’t mean the costs of U.S. support for Netanyahu’s reckless and criminal behavior will reach $1 trillion, but the Iraq case underscores how the costs of an allegedly “limited” conflict can quickly increase to near-unbelievable levels.

There has been real resistance to the administration’s ongoing support for the wars in Gaza and beyond, most notably from the student ceasefire movement, which is moving full speed ahead despite a wave of authoritarian-style crackdowns on protest by presidents of universities that allegedly stand for free speech. And a few members of Congress have spoken out and attempted to reverse U.S. involvement in the war, most recently by way of a resolution aimed at blocking a new $20 billion arms offer to Israel that has been introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and several colleagues.

In the longer run, continuing on this path will damage the reputation and influence of the United States for years to come. How can any U.S. official speak of the “rules-based international order” with a straight face given Washington’s enabling of the Gaza war? How can Washington press other nations to end systematic abuses of human rights?

We are at what I believe could be an historic turning point in the history of the United States. Will it be a disruptive power, attempting to cling to influence through force and threat of force despite the disastrous failures of that approach during this century, or can we steer the country back onto more positive ground, where we rebalance the tools we use to interact with other countries and people and move towards a more cooperative foreign policy that truly relies on military force and arms supplies only if absolutely necessary. Absent that shift, America’s decline as a world power is likely to accelerate, with great damage done both here and abroad.