Many years ago some critics of the state of Israel began citing US aid money as a fraction of the budget of Israel. At that time Israeli newspapers commonly reported only the budget of the central government that is the expenditure of revenues collected for national uses rather than local uses. As that budget was about $US30 billion, the $3-5 billion per year was clearly 10 to 13 percent of that budget. In years (most of them) when Israel got additional funds, such as the year the Columbia Shuttle went down and additional $12 billion as compared to an additional one half billion for NASA, the percentage goes over one third of the entire budget.

Izziehuggers noticed the critics and Israel took action. The government began using the total tax revenues even though $70 billion of it were for mundane this like trash collection and highway repair whereas the $30 billion was for things like military spending, occupying the West Bank, Jerusalem, Syria and until recently Gaza. Israeli newspapers went along with the charade.

As will all lies the liars who tell them occasionally tell the truth. I submit the following.

Haaretzdaily.com
May 7, 2006
The Finance Ministry has estimated that the tax revenue to be gained from U.S. tycoon Warren Buffett's purchase of 80 percent of Galilee-based Iscar Metalworking will be about $1 billion - at NIS 4.6 billion, a figure amounting to almost 3 percent of the state's estimated tax revenues for 2006.

$1 billion is about 3% making the entire budget about $33 Billion. This is exactly the kind of number the newspapers used to report. In moments of excitement they tend to blurt out the truth.

I include the entire article as a link on the quoted text as these mistakes are usually quickly caught and the article vanishes as this one did in less than 24 hours.

Update: About a week later haaretzdaily.com went offline leaving only a much abbreviated haaretz.com.