But there is another reason Hirchson has a big smile plastered across his face: Israel is not required to pay back the loans. If anything, it pays on the interest, never the principal. Call the bank, tell them you plan to do that with your mortgage, and wait to see how long before you are homeless.

"It would be … accurate to say Israel has never been required to repay a U.S. government loan. The truth of the matter is complex, and designed to be so by those who seek to conceal it from the U.S. taxpayer," writes Richard H. Curtiss, a former U.S. foreign service officer. "Most U.S. loans to Israel are forgiven, and many were made with the explicit understanding that they would be forgiven before Israel was required to repay them. By disguising as loans what in fact were grants, cooperating members of Congress exempted Israel from the U.S. oversight that would have accompanied grants. On other loans, Israel was expected to pay the interest and eventually to begin repaying the principal. But the so-called Cranston Amendment, which has been attached by Congress to every foreign aid appropriation since 1983, provides that economic aid to Israel will never dip below the amount Israel is required to pay on its outstanding loans. In short, whether U.S. aid is extended as grants or loans to Israel, it never returns to the Treasury."

It is worth quoting Curtiss at length:

In an article in the Washington Report for December 1991/January 1992, Frank Collins estimated the costs of this interest, based upon prevailing interest rates for every year since 1949. I have updated this by applying a very conservative 5 percent interest rate for subsequent years, and confined the amount upon which the interest is calculated to grants, not loans or loan guarantees.

On this basis the $84.8 billion in grants, loans and commodities Israel has received from the U.S. since 1949 cost the U.S. an additional $49,936,880,000 in interest.

There are many other costs of Israel to U.S. taxpayers, such as most or all of the $45.6 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Egypt since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 (compared to $4.2 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt for the preceding 26 years). U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, which is pegged at two-thirds of U.S. foreign aid to Israel, averages $2.2 billion per year.

There also have been immense political and military costs to the U.S. for its consistent support of Israel during Israel’s half-century of disputes with the Palestinians and all of its Arab neighbors. In addition, there have been the approximately $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees and perhaps $20 billion in tax-exempt contributions made to Israel by American Jews in the nearly half-century since Israel was created.

Even excluding all of these extra costs, America’s $84.8 billion in aid to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S. government by Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli.

It would be interesting to know how many of those American taxpayers believe they and their families have received as much from the U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a citizen of Israel. But it’s a question that will never occur to the American public because, so long as America’s mainstream media, Congress and president maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers.

Meanwhile, Israel is preparing a new attack against Lebanon, as they are freshly armed with "short-range rockets armed with cluster bombs" from the United States," according to Time. Even though cluster bombs are considered "dumb bombs," Paul Gigot, editorial director for the War Street, er Wall Street Journal, praised the latest shipment of "smart weapons" rushed to Israel. Fox’s Juan Williams asked Gigot if he happened to see "the pictures [of Lebanon]," and Gigot replied: "Thank God for the 'bunker busters’ because they are able to get to people 100 feet down," never mind the 300 people in the apartment building in the way.

If not for the no-strings attached greenbacks flooding into Israel, the country would be obliged to make peace with its neighbors, either allow the Palestinians to set up their own state or become Israeli citizens. Minus all the free mazuma, Israel would be another small Middle Eastern country and a lot of Lebanese, and Palestinians, would be alive right now. However, as it stands, the average American taxpayer is complicit in the murder of thousands of innocent Arabs.