Israel Gets More Foreign Aid from the US than the Continent of South America

Earlier I noted that the 2008 foreign aid budget for Israel, which Tom Friedman says has one of the strongest economies in the world, was about $2.4 billion. This USA Today article dealing with Bush's trip to South America says that aid for all Western Hemisphere countries, where tens of millions of people live in poverty, is slated to be $1.45 billion for 2008, cut from $1.6 billion this year.