I took my first trip to Israel in December of 1986 when I was 21 years old. What surprised me the most (besides how different it looked from the Jewish section of Baltimore) were the taxis. Almost all of them were Mercedes. I couldn’t figure out why all the Jewish people were being transported in German cars when it was taboo to support anything German only 40 years after the Holocaust.

I later learned that the taxis were donated by the German government as war reparations because it had no cash to give the Jewish state.

I took my last trip to Israel 20 years later, in July of 2006. I again was surprised by the cars. Not a hybrid to be found. I see more hybrids in my neighborhood in Baltimore City than I saw my whole week in Israel. This was shocking, given that Israel was at war with Hezbollah at that time. Hezbollah is financed through Iranian oil sales.

With the Islamic jihad against Israel financed by terrorist oil dollars, why isn’t the Israeli government doing something to reduce its country’s gasoline expenditures? With a nation that has more NASDAQ listing than any foreign country, why can’t they produce a plug-in hybrid that works on ethanol?

Military spending is the tiny state’s largest portion of GNP. Israel should be spending a portion of that on its moon-shot – developing a car that would stop funneling money to terrorists.