This article has some fuzzy math in it. The main item is the bogus interest figure cited (accurately) above. The assumption underlying this number is that Israeli aid is uniquely financed by borrowing, unlike all other spending that is offset by revenues. If you applied this adjustment to *all* spending, you would get a total interest obligation vastly in excess of the actual amount. In other words, suppose total spending is $10, revenues are $8, and aid to Israel is $1. In truth, only $2 is added to debt, which at 5% interest is 10 cents a year. The article's claim is that a dollar of aid means 5 cents of interest. But if all spending is treated likewise, total interest is 50 cents, rather than 10 cents.
It's also fuzzy to add loans to loan guarantees, as the author acknowledges in the article (but does anyway). The value of the loan guarantee is just the spread in interest rates, not the principal (as the author acknowledges).
There is this funny sentence in the article, and I don't mean funny ha-ha, I mean creepy . . .
"Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both."
I have to wonder why people waste their time with this stuff while the IDF is shooting Palestinians down like dogs in the street.
mbs