While the number of millionaires in Israel soared by 43% in just one year, from 2008 to 2009, a rate bested only by Hong Kong and India, Israeli charities, quoted in the Hebrew press, report that " at least 223,000 families suffer from what is referred to as ‘nutritional insecurity’ - a state in which a person has no regular access to essential nourishment”. In plain English, they are hungry. In truth, poverty in Israel, statistically, is worse than even Turkey and Mexico. Almost one in five Israelis live in poverty, according to OECD guidelines; for children, the rate is nearly one in three. It is reported that some 6 per cent of hungry Israeli children resort to crime to feed themselves and, despite the existence. of many charities intended to alleviate hunger in childhood, thousands of kids are turning up at school every morning having had no breakfast and with no prospect of a hot meal that day.

But the Israeli Government had no difficulty in finding at the very least $17 billion (some £10 billion) to create the infrastructure - just the infrastrucrure, nothing more - for Jewish settlement on the West Bank from where I have heard no reports of Jewish children going hungry. There is surely something wrong somewhere. I wish I could put my finger on it...