Now I know this is a touchy subject, due to race, religion, and a whole boatload of other factors. But I want to explain it the way I see it, which I think may supersede any party affiliations.

*(All facts are culled quickly from the web, so take from it what you will - i don't believe any to be wildly inaccurate)

1. First, check out some stats.



2. One thing you may notice over the years is that the us has essentially stopped loaning Israel money, instead - and for the past twenty years - we've just started giving them money. These days we are straight up giving them money to the tune of 2,560 million dollars (for 2006). How much living, medical, and housing assistance could we have had in our own country for that amount of money? I'm pretty sure it could help out all of the ten houseless people I pass on my way to work, and get meds to that crazy dude who pretends to be playing a broken guitar all the time.



3. You may also notice that out of that 2,560 million dollars, 240 million goes towards 'economic assistance.' Now I know that everything past one million is a little hard to comprehend (for me anyway), so lets do percentages. That's less than ten percent (9.375% to be exact). With some other very small change refugee assistance in there, the rest - and by "rest" I mean 2,280 million dollars (89.06% of the total) - goes to military spending.



4. Now, I am guessing that this roughly two billion dollars comes from the military portion of the US budget. I may not be correct on this. If it is coming from any kind of war budget, it's not even being counted (over $100 billion). Dont even get me started on that one.



5. According to The War Tax Resistors the military portion of the US budget is around $563 billion. According to the US government it is around $419.3 billion. Believe who you want, either way its a whole hell of a lot of money. A very round estimate would be somewhere between 30-60% of the overall US budget.



6. According to the CIA World Factbook Israel's military expenditures are around (est) $9.45 billion. This means that almost a quarter (24.1%) of Israel's military budge comes directly, no-strings-attached, don't bother paying us back my brotha, from the us.



7. Now for simplicities sake, lets pretend that all of the US governments money comes from our taxes. Theoretically, this is true, realistically it can probably be broken up a great deal into things like our personal taxes, our predecessors accumulated taxes, our federal business deals, whatever. How ever it breaks down, some percentage of it comes from your paycheck.
   
   
8. Now, read some news.



9. And look at some pictures (only if you're feeling up to it, some are graphic).



10. and now go to sleep wondering what percentage of this little dead girl belongs to you.

I'm not going to tell you you should do something, or even that you should be bothered by whats going on. But you should, if you are an american citizen, be aware of it. Even better if you want to do something.