The people of the US donate about 2% a year to various charitable causes, that's where his figure comes from, it's separate from what the government does. That includes a lot of internal stuff like people giving to their local church. Such charity is respectable, too, it helps e.g. the homeless Americans living on the streets, but it's separate from international aid.
The US's international development budget is only 0.2% which in my opinion is a disgrace. It's defense spending by comparison is 3.8%, more than an order of magnitude larger. That's for 2013, for 2012 for example it was 4.4%, in the sixties it was nearly 10%, and the 45-year average is about 5.5%. It makes that 0.2% look pretty puny.
As for the recipients, indeed military aid is larger than US Aid aid (the governmental agency of the US that does humanitarian/economic development) by a few billion. And so it's no surprise that foreign aid is very much tied to national security interests, which themselves are tied to US economic interests, making the 0.2% not a very benevolent figure beyond the fact that it's relatively small.
You mentioned Israel/Palestine, interestingly the WB/Gaza are the only group in the list of 25 top recipients that receive no military aid at all, only economic aid. For perspective, Palestine receives 20x more economic aid than Israel from the US. And Israel receives 6x more military assistance than Palestine receives economic aid. It's a bit of a weird situation indeed, as every few years the one army destroys infrastructure of the other territory, the US for part of that army, and then pays for the rebuilding of the infrastructure. Leaving politics outside of this, it's weird indeed, if I were a martian looking down from my spaceship, I'd have taken humans for quite silly creatures!
Also in this top 25 list of aid recipients, not a single country receives more economic aid than military aid. Every single country receives more military aid, often by a large margin. Except Palestine and Sudan (which receives as much military as economic aid).
Interesting factoid: remittance from the US (e.g. relatively poor Mexicans sending money back home to friends and family) surpasses the totality of all American military aid and US Aid, each, and, every, single, year.
The US's international development budget is only 0.2% which in my opinion is a disgrace. It's defense spending by comparison is 3.8%, more than an order of magnitude larger. That's for 2013, for 2012 for example it was 4.4%, in the sixties it was nearly 10%, and the 45-year average is about 5.5%. It makes that 0.2% look pretty puny.
As for the recipients, indeed military aid is larger than US Aid aid (the governmental agency of the US that does humanitarian/economic development) by a few billion. And so it's no surprise that foreign aid is very much tied to national security interests, which themselves are tied to US economic interests, making the 0.2% not a very benevolent figure beyond the fact that it's relatively small.
You mentioned Israel/Palestine, interestingly the WB/Gaza are the only group in the list of 25 top recipients that receive no military aid at all, only economic aid. For perspective, Palestine receives 20x more economic aid than Israel from the US. And Israel receives 6x more military assistance than Palestine receives economic aid. It's a bit of a weird situation indeed, as every few years the one army destroys infrastructure of the other territory, the US for part of that army, and then pays for the rebuilding of the infrastructure. Leaving politics outside of this, it's weird indeed, if I were a martian looking down from my spaceship, I'd have taken humans for quite silly creatures!
Also in this top 25 list of aid recipients, not a single country receives more economic aid than military aid. Every single country receives more military aid, often by a large margin. Except Palestine and Sudan (which receives as much military as economic aid).
Interesting factoid: remittance from the US (e.g. relatively poor Mexicans sending money back home to friends and family) surpasses the totality of all American military aid and US Aid, each, and, every, single, year.