The United States gives $3 billion per year to our friend Israel, which comes out to 40 percent of the foreign aid budget. I like Costa Rica, but we don?t give them anything, and India with it?s millions of hungry children, gets $161 million a year. We have given $81.98 billion to Israel since we pushed for its creation in 1949. Yet CNN?s John Christensen tells us that “Israel has one one-thousandth of the world’s population and the 16th highest per capita income in the world.” In 1999, when Christensen?s article was published, critics rightly accused us of giving too much money. So we dropped the amount to $2.94 billion, and per year.

What does a small country do with all that cash? Military spending is a delightful way of supporting your benefactor?s economy, for $1.86 billion of that $2.94 billion was spent on military equipment from the United States. Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey, and was forcefully taken from a people who had been there for ages. This action creates a colony of the previous residents, thus, a large military is essential. According to the CIA?s fact book on Israel, there are 3 million people available as military manpower out of its population on six million, with an additional 50,000 men and then another 50,000 women reaching military age each year. Plus, it provides an extremely important spot for defense for the United

States. According to Christensen, this is one of the reasons, besides creating a homeland for the Jewish people, that Israel was formed.

Steven Meinrath, a Sacramento attorney and American Jew, spoke at a recent presentation by the Middle East Peace Project. He reminds us that the situation cannot be simplified to the Palestinians hating of the Israelis and vice versa. “There are significant differences within those groups of people,” he emphasized. Meinrath calls for American Jews to speak out on this explosive issue. “The occupation is un-Jewish. We cannot let the criminal action of [Ariel]Sharon define Judaism for us. It is our obligation to speak out.”

Many Israelis do not believe that the occupation of Palestine is moral, and are protesting to relive the terrible situation be alleviated. Four-hundred and two military personnel are refusing to fight, and 25 conscientious objectors are currently in jail. The statement of these honorable military personnel reads, “We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel?s defense. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose, and we shall take no part in them.”

Palestinians have been violent in their own right. Like any conflict, this one has two sides. But as Akef Shihabi, a Palestinian who now resides in California points out, “a desperate people use desperate measures.” While Israel has 3,900 tanks and 435 fighter planes, Palestinians have rocks and homemade bombs. Shihabi is also part of the Middle East Peace Project, and he sees the United States as a definite player in this ongoing horror. He ended his speech to the silent audience with a challenging question. “Are we going to see the Palestinians annihilated with our money as Americans?”

So when the international community calls for the United Stated to do something, they really are asking the father to control it?s powerful son. Recently, several unarmed doctors, relief workers and protestors from around the world have been injured and killed by the bizarre gunfire of the Israeli Defense Forces while attempting to raise consciousness in the occupied territories. Most of us shake our head and say “it?s such a complex situation,” but funding the deaths of a repressed, suicidally desperate people is a simple situation, is dead wrong. This is the action that Israelis, Palestinians, Europeans and Australians are calling on the American public do. If people knew of the atrocities committed, then the 42 percent of Americans who think the aid to Israel should stay the same may reconsider. We must stop the murderous oppression now.