Israel Uncle Sam Closes His Wallet

As Bush dooms loan guarantees, and relations with the U.S. worsen, a bomb levels the Buenos Aires embassy

Israel and the U.S. have long been on a collision course over loan guarantees to help resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union. Last week the crunch finally came, sinking any chance of obtaining the guarantees anytime soon and pushing the two countries' ties into what one U.S. diplomat calls "the roughest patch I've seen."

Without American backing, Israel says, it cannot raise the funds it needs at rates it can afford to settle the 1 million Jews expected to arrive from the former Soviet Union in the next five years -- a task comparable to the U.S. absorbing all of...

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