US pomoc Israeli

Richard Curtiss: "U.S. aid to Israel has always been a touchy subject, for reasons I will present in the following pages. Members of Congress never mention the total, probably for two reasons. One is that few of them are sure of it themselves, although they are responsible for the authorizing legislation. The other is that if they mentioned the total, or whatever they think is the total, their constituents would ask them why Israel receives so much more federal money than do U.S. states in the same population range, and whose residents pay taxes to the federal government.

* * *

Instead, writers usually noted that “Israel receives $1.2 billion in annual economic aid from the United States.” Or they wrote that “Israel receives $1.8 billion in U.S. military aid.” But they seemed never to combine the two to provide the public with the true total. Nor did they mention the tens of millions—and in some years hundreds of millions—of dollars from other U.S. government departments, particularly the Department of Defense, that Israel receives each year.

* * *

I was astonished to learn, after only an hour in the USAID library in Rosslyn, Virginia, that as of the end of 1995, Israel—with a population less than that of Hong Kong—had received $62.5 billion in foreign aid, almost exactly the amount received by all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and of Latin America and the Caribbean combined.

Even more mind-boggling are the per capita outlays, based upon statistics from the Population Reference Bureau of Washington, DC. In mid-1986, the combined population of the sub-Saharan African countries was 568 million, and the per capita foreign aid over the preceding half century was $43. For Latin America and the Caribbean, a population of 486 million, the foreign aid total was $50 per person.

By contrast, Israel’s mid-1996 population was 5.8 million people. The take per Israeli for American foreign aid amounted to $10,775 by 1995."

Lze uzavřít, že israelská prosperita v porovnání s okolními arabskými státy je založena na obrovských německých a amerických dotacích: "U.S. taxpayer aid continues to flow to Israel although Israel has been reluctant to follow through on promises to replace its Eastern European style socialist system with a true market economy, trim its bloated bureaucracy, and privatize its inefficient state-owned enterprises."