“As a US taxpayer, why should I be paying so much money to Israel?” Another fair question directed to me from a reader. And one very worthy of a response.

Here’s the short answer: You’re not. In fact, you are arguably earning money from us.

In 2022 (the year before the war — more on that shortly), the U.S. gave Israel a grand total of $785.3 million. That’s all. You can find that number in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, and it represents 0.00308% of U.S. gross domestic product that year.

That same year, the General Accounting Office reported that the U.S. spent $1.7 billion on maintenance of empty federal office buildings. And roughly $15 billion is spent every year maintaining 115,000 troops across Germany, Japan and South Korea.

In government terms, $785 million does not sound like a lot, right? That’s because U.S. aid to Israel is officially $3.8 billion a year, according to a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two countries in 2016. But there’s a catch (in favor of the U.S.).

The majority of that is actually credit. It’s a coupon from the U.S. government that Israel can use to get U.S.-produced defense products.

The only part of that $3.8 billion that’s actually a gift to Israel is for what’s called offshore procurement. That’s the portion Israel is permitted to spend as it pleases. And this not only goes down every year, it will be canceled by 2028.

Even after the Iran-funded Oct. 7, 2023, massacre sparked the regional war in which Israel is still embroiled, that aid structure remained in place.

Congress did generously grant Israel a one-time $8.7 billion emergency defense aid package in 2024 — as it did for Ukraine in 2022 ($66 billion), 2023 ($59.8 billion) and 2024 ($60.8 billion). But the 2024 grant — for which we are very grateful — was a wartime exception.

In 2025, we reverted to same model — the vast share of U.S. aid to Israel went to American defense contractors.

The spending for this sad war has fallen on the Israeli economy. We will be paying this back for a generation, at least.

Before the current war with Iran, the cumulative cost of the war to the Israeli economy was estimated at $68 billion by the Bank of Israel. When this is all over, I would not be surprised if we topped $120 billion.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle that in many ways offers the U.S. far more bang for its buck (pardon the military pun).

The $3.8 billion in credits for Israel includes $500 million specifically earmarked for missile defense. That works differently from the rest of the aid.

The U.S. doesn’t really give that money to Israel; it outsources its R&D to us.

America tried to master missile interception for decades. I personally watched U.S.-made Patriot missiles repeatedly miss incoming Iraqi ballistic missiles in 1991, so I can attest to the less-than-astounding success of these efforts.

The Israelis figured it out. We built Iron Dome and the other layers of our missile defense umbrella. And they work with well over 90% accuracy.

What’s more, the U.S. has co-production rights to this technology. Raytheon manufactures the components of Iron Dome across 15 American states. Every time we order new interceptors (and we use a lot) or any country buys an Iron Dome battery, American factory workers build part of it.

And demand has surged since they’ve proven themselves against real threats. Every successful interception broadcast to the world is simultaneously a product demonstration for a system with American parts inside it.

The same return-on-investment model applies to the F-35. Israel was the first country outside the U.S. to fly the aircraft in combat, the first to shoot down an enemy aircraft in a dogfight and has used it more extensively in live operational conditions than any other operator.

Every sortie is an advertisement for Lockheed Martin. Countries considering the purchase of a $100 million aircraft want to know it works. Israel has answered that question, repeatedly — and American workers build every one of them.

So, the question was a fair one. But it rests on a misunderstanding of what U.S. aid to Israel actually is.

It is not a check written to a foreign government. It is a credit redeemable almost exclusively at American defense companies, for American-made weapons and systems, built by American workers. Only a small portion is not — and that is ending in less than two budget cycles.

You can disagree with Israeli policy. You can dislike war — I know I do. That is a legitimate conversation.

But the fact is that most of the money that flows out of your pocket to Israel flows right back into it — with interest.

Steven Greenberg is a Fort Wayne native and a Tel Aviv-based novelist and writer.