...February 17th, 2002 is a day I will never forget: It was during the Intifada, with the worse still ahead of us. I participated in an intimate Peace Now demonstration as an active member. For more than 30 years, I shared Friedman's view that a return to the 1967 borders is a magical solution. Yet during the rally, we were informed that a suicide bomber killed two children at a pizza parlor. The protestors observed a moment of silence, before the next speaker, a Palestinian "moderate," took the stage. His speech focused solely on accusing Israel while going back to the Nakba and early days of Zionism. The terror attack at the pizza parlor in Karnei Shomron was not mentioned at all. I left the rally with a sense of disgust...

...Of the $3 billion handed over by the US annually, only $690 million are transferred to Israel in practice. The rest - 75% of the aid - remains in the US and constitutes an indirect government subsidy to US arms manufacturers - Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas etc. - thereby enhancing US employment.

Israel's acquisitions in the US are far greater than the American grant. Just recently we read about a $1.8 billion acquisition of Hercules aircraft from Lockheed. Does Friedman think there are no other global cargo plane manufacturers? Moreover, as result of the US grant, Israel has given up on the development of weapons that would compete with America's military-industrial complex. In addition, Israeli developments were integrated by American manufacturers, thus saving the lives of US troops on the battlefield...

...So take back the $690 million you gave us. We'll do just fine without it. It comes out to about NIS 400 (roughly $120) per every Israeli citizen - most certainly not something that would bring us down. We don't have to read claims about Jews and money in Friedman's writing. We could hear them for free, for 20 years, at Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons.

If Friedman still wishes to know what the US money contributes to the regional conflict, I learned about it when I escorted foreign journalists during a tour in the territories. A Palestinian industrialist told me: "There will be no peace between us until Palestine has a normal economy. I'm an industrialist and one of the only ones who produce something in Palestine. Yet what we have here is an economy unlike anywhere else in the world. It's not only the official budget of the Palestinian Authority, who receives about $2 billion annually from abroad and spends it on tens of thousands of needless internal security orgnizations and government jobs. The Americans and Europeans are completely crazy."...