Reply #14: Take a look at the numbers

[Donald Ian Rankin]

In the below table, the first column is US aid in 2006, taken from http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm
(I have no idea how reliable this is, but it came near the top on google), in millions of dollars.

The second column is population in thousands, taken from wikipedia (N.B. that this figure is often not from 2006, but I think the error from this will be smallish, and I'm not writing for publication...).

The third column is US aid per capita, in dollars. Note that Israel got about 4 times as much as Jordan, and coming on for 10 times as much as anywhere else. Note also that Israeli GDP per capita is $29,000, to Jordan's $5,000; I haven't checked any of the others but I suspect nearly all of them are lower still, many of them much, much lower. Note also that 2006 is the year covered when Israel received the *least* aid.

So, if you're looking at "countries that receive too much US aid" then Israel is way out front in a league entirely of its own, and the (very distant) second-runner is probably Jordan, not Egypt.


Israel: 2520 7465 337.58
Egypt: 1795 77420 23.19
Columbia: 558 45274 12.32
Jordan: 461 6316 72.99
Pakistan: 698 168747 4.14
Peru: 133 29132 4.57
Indonesia 158 240271 0.66
Kenya 213 39002 5.46
Bolivia 122 9775 12.48
Ukraine 115 46011 2.5
India 94 1177128 0.08
Haiti 163 9035 18.04
Russia 52 141927 0.37
Ethiopia 145 79221 1.83
West Bank/Gaza 150 3900 38.46 (N.B. this population worked out by hand, may be wrong).
Liberia 89 3955 22.5
Bangladesh 49 162221 0.3
Bosnia 51 4613 11.06 (N.B. this population for Bosnia & Herzegovina, may be wrong).




P.S. For what it's worth, I wholeheartedly support the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and all their descendants, and the transformation of Israel from a Jewish state into a non-racist state. I think it's an impossible pipe dream that the Palestinians have no chance of achieving, but that in any final settlement that were reached it should be acknowledged that by giving up on it they are making an *enormous* concession, and doing so purely in the face of might rather than right.