http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt This seems odd. How can Israel purchase $13B in Treasuries in one year? That dwarfs the aid that we send them. It isn't like they have a huge trade surplus with the U.S., either. Are they betting on Deflation?
The problem with Tic data is that it comes in a 3 month lag. The key month to watch for when the data comes out is May. That's when treasuries started falling off a cliff.
Maybe either we gave them aid in the form of TBonds? OR maybe the chart means the total held by the CITIZENS in that country? As to why Russia is buying, probably due to runup in Oil prices and they parked a lot of that $$$ into foreign securities. ENgland? They were hammered in the financial sector last year - something like $1 trillion of the $7 trillion held there was moved out of the country due to tax laws and the bank sector collapse. I am willing to bet that Russia and England's holdings of all foreign bonds would have changed somewhat similarly.