After Oct. 7, Jewish nonprofits around the world sprang into action, raising funds in response to the immediate and emerging needs of Israelis: supporting hostage awareness campaigns, helping children who lost one or both parents during that day’s acts of terror, creating mental health services for traumatized Israelis and other causes that emerged from the Hamas-led massacres. 

In recent months, an increasing number of Jewish-led or -driven organizations and relief nonprofits have begun to expand their focus to include the Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, asserting that it is a moral and Jewish imperative and, in some cases, an effort that actually assists Israel in its war against Hamas.

“Supporting Israel’s humanitarian approach in Gaza is a profound expression of our Jewish values, particularly those of tzedakah [justice], hesed [loving kindness] and tikkun olam [repairing the world],” Rabbi Dina Brawer, executive director of World Jewish Relief-USA, told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

Some Jewish organizations initially refrained from Gaza relief work in the early months of the war in order to focus solely on Israel’s needs; for others, there were concerns that humanitarian aid would end up in the hands of terrorists and additional time was needed to establish more secure methods of transferring goods to ensure that they only reached civilians. In some cases, there were also concerns that focusing on the needs of Palestinians — as Israelis were still reeling from its deadliest ever attack and in need of assistance — would be inappropriate and would alienate stakeholders.

While humanitarian aid to Gaza remains contentious, many of these issues — particularly around establishing a more secure framework for delivering aid — appear to have been addressed.

One of the first Jewish organizations to get involved in Gaza relief work was the Israeli tech relief nonprofit SmartAid. Earlier this year, the founding director of the group, said that he understood the discomfort around Jewish groups providing aid to Palestinians in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, but that after discussion and consideration he and his donors determined that it was the right thing to do. He also noted that Israeli officials have explicitly supported the transfer of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.

“I am doing what people are saying,” Zahavi told eJP at the time. “If you just Google [you can find] thousands of articles about the Israeli government saying they are supporting aid for civilians, but are against Hamas. We are taking the words and making it into action.”

In the case of World Jewish Relief-USA, which raises funds for the U.K-based World Jewish Relief, the organization had asked supporters to donate to Israel-based charities, and donated from its own reserves to partners on the ground, after Oct. 7. But by June, in coordination with Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) — the Israeli administrative body that oversees humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza — a small number of private donors stepped forward to provide targeted support to a local partner to set up a field hospital to provide maternal and infant health care for Gazans. (For security reasons, the local partner cannot be identified by name.)

The timing for the initiative, Brawer said, hinged on a number of factors. WJR was monitoring the humanitarian situation in Gaza on an ongoing basis and recognized the needs on the ground. In April, WJR notified its U.K. supporters that the organization was considering action; it then identified a partner and underwent a due diligence process. At the same time, the organization’s leadership held discussions with COGAT and set up a webinar for WJR supporters to hear from their head of civil affairs more about Israel’s approach to humanitarian aid in Gaza. The plan to fund the creation of a field hospital came after WJR received explicit encouragement from the Israeli authorities to maximize the humanitarian impact of the aid by focusing on mothers and children.

The New Israel Fund (NIF) also waited several months before entering the Gaza relief fray as it sought to assess the situation and determine how to best and most safely act, its CEO, Daniel Sokatch, told eJP.

“The past 10 months have been one evolving crisis,” Sokatch said. “It is important to NIF to stay limber so that we can focus our resources where it matters most,” he said, responding to eJP’s question about why NIF launched its campaign when it did. “Given that humanitarian relief in Gaza is not where our expertise lies, we took the time to find the partners we knew we could trust. We launched the campaign as soon as we were ready.”

In May, NIF raised $750,000 from 2,500 donors from the U.S., Israel, Canada, the U.K. and Germany “to help feed innocent people living in Gaza,” according to the organization’s website. As of this week, the organization has sent more than $1.3 million to aid organizations addressing the needs of the displaced Gazans — the first time that NIF has raised and distributed this level of funding for programs outside of Israel proper. Sokatch called the effort “totally consonant with everything that NIF tries to be in the world,” as an organization that envisions “an Israel that lives in peace with itself and with its neighbors, and a notion that there is no future — within or outside Israel — that’s not a shared future between Palestinians and Israelis, between Arabs and Jews.”

In July, with a coalition of 14 Israeli, Palestinian and international NGOs, private companies and academic institutions, the Arava Institute launched its “Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza” campaign, to provide immediate relief to refugee camps and establish sustainable water and sanitation systems that run on renewable energy. The focus of the institute has always been on creating sustainable environmental solutions in the region, executive director of its U.S.-based “Friends of” operation, Rachel Kalikow told eJP, but now that focus has shifted toward supporting refugee families, working with Damour for Community Development, a Palestinian NGO and five-year partner of the institute. 

“Helping innocent Palestinians in Gaza who are victims of this war — as are many Israelis — and who had no part in the atrocities of Oct. 7, is an expression of the Jewish value of tikkun olam,” Kalikow said. “At one of the darkest moments in Israel’s history, while our own brothers and sisters are suffering, our humanity is tested by our ability to recognize human suffering in the faces of our neighbors.” 

HIAS raised more than $2 million to support Israelis in need after Oct. 7. But HIAS was also “one of the few Jewish organizations speaking about the needs in Gaza from the beginning,” Rebecca Kirzner, the organization’s associate VP, strategic communications and media, told eJP. It took the organization — whose diverse staff and supporters represent “a range of views and convictions” — “many months to think about ways to address the ongoing humanitarian need in the region,” she added. And in late July, HIAS launched an appeal directing supporters looking to assist displaced Gazans to donate to two humanitarian organizations already providing aid to civilians in Gaza: Catholic Relief Services and Global Communities. 

HIAS has never operated in or sent funds to the Palestinian territories and is, in fact, restricted from working directly in the West Bank and Gaza, partly because of restrictions by a prior UN/ECOSOC agreement, Kirzner told eJP. The organization operates in more than 20 countries, Kirzner said, but only when it can add the most value. During the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, for example, HIAS raised funds for organizations already doing relief work on site instead of getting involved on the ground itself, and the organization is taking a similar approach in supporting work in Gaza.

“Given the expertise of our partners, the way we can best ensure excellent service delivery is in amplifying their work and giving HIAS supporters an opportunity to contribute to it,” Kirzner said.

Before Oct. 7, the Arava Institute and Damour had worked together to install Watergen atmospheric water generators in seven Gaza communities and health-care centers as well as a wastewater treatment plant and solar arrays. Today, the partners build on that relationship and expertise in “off-grid, scalable environmental solutions for an area with little potable water and energy security,” Kalikow said, calling the environmental cooperation “important for the environmental health of Israel as well as for Gaza.” 

Kalikow explained that Israel has its own selfish reasons for wanting to address the growing environmental crisis in the neighboring Gaza Strip: Lack of sanitation and flow of untreated wastewater in Gaza presents a health hazard to Israel’s beaches and desalinated water supply, while the destruction of Gaza’s buildings is likely to cause long-term air pollution and spread disease throughout the region, including in Israel, she said. For the Arava Institute, such joint environmental work can also build trust and “serve as a model for constructive peacemaking.”

Vetting local partners and assessing on-the-ground needs are critical in order to avoid having funds or supplies diverted or stolen by terrorists before reaching their destination. WJR, for example, relies on its local partner and their infrastructure and staff to establish the hospital. They also check the staff and security “meticulously,” Brawer said, to ensure there’s no involvement from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health and that WJR’s aid will reach the intended beneficiaries. Arava Institute partner Damour runs the vetting of shelter residents and contractors, toward ensuring none are affiliated with Hamas or any other terrorist groups. 

David Lehrer, director of the Arava Institute’s Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy, who is overseeing the fundraising initiative, said that as international agencies try to meet refugees’ immediate needs like shelter, food, water and hygiene, most “aren’t building any sustainability or self-reliance.” Real progress, he added, will take years, and will only “start to happen when there’s a cease-fire.” 

Damour has already built green shelters for about 5,000 people in Al-Mawasi, a safe zone established by the IDF. The institute is also sending 10 caravans to be used as medical clinics, as well as a wastewater treatment system and three desalination pumps. The next stage of aid will include building more shelters to accommodate a total of 20,000 refugees, half in the south and half in the north, and more sustainable solutions for the long term, which will all require advance planning. 

“The idea that the massive construction will be done overnight is a fantasy,” he told eJP. “The sooner we start rebuilding the region, the less suffering there will be. We can’t afford to sit back and wait and see what happens.” 

“We can’t do anything about the war, but we can start thinking about the day after,” said Lehrer.

Judah Ari Gross and Judith Sudilovsky contributed to this report.