The UJA-Federation of New York will send $1 million to an Israeli humanitarian group providing aid to civilians in Gaza, the US federation’s CEO announced on Friday.
The funds will go to IsraAID, Israel’s largest nongovernmental aid organization, to supply food, medicine, and water filtration systems for displaced Gazans.
IsraAID has traditionally operated in disaster zones abroad, from earthquake relief in Turkey to aid for Ukrainian refugees, but since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, which started the ongoing war, the organization has expanded its work to Israel and now into Gaza.
In a letter to the community, UJA CEO Eric Goldstein condemned Hamas for holding hostages, obstructing aid, and provoking the conflict, but said that the Jewish community is nevertheless compelled to help alleviate the suffering of civilians in Gaza.
“What many of us feel is a confluence of unbearable grief, anger, and the moral imperative — the Jewish imperative — to act,” Goldstein wrote. “Not everyone agrees on what should be done, or how. There is anguish and outrage around every perspective. We must hold tight to what has always anchored the Jewish people: the belief that all human life is sacred.”
IsraAID says it has already reached more than 100,000 people in Gaza through partnerships with the Israel Defense Forces’ Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories and international agencies.
The pledged donation is far larger than any previously announced aid contributions to Gaza by Jewish groups. Earlier this month, the American Jewish Committee said it would give $25,000 to the Archdiocese of New York to aid in repairs of Gaza’s Holy Family Church, which was damaged by an Israeli strike. Three people were killed and others injured in the incident.
The AJC’s announcement noted Israel’s explanation that the damage was caused by “stray ammunition” from a nearby operation and that the church was not targeted. The gift marked a rare, possibly unprecedented, donation by a mainstream US Jewish group toward Gaza Palestinians during wartime, and was framed by the AJC as a gesture to sustain Jewish-Catholic relations.
In recent weeks, images of starving Palestinians, particularly children, have alarmed the world, ramping up international pressure on Israel to enable more aid into the coastal enclave, where war has been raging since the devastating 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Israel denies the allegations of widespread starvation and has said it makes efforts to allow sufficient aid into Gaza. But facing heavy international pressure, the government recently increased the flow of supplies, after having barred aid for 11 weeks between March and May.
In a press conference Sunday that largely dealt with the security cabinet’s recent approval of a plan to take over Gaza City, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hamas and the international media for promoting false allegations of Israeli-imposed starvation in Gaza — describing a “global campaign of lies.”
While the premier denied that Israel is deliberately starving Gazan civilians, and emphasized that several of the viral photos were misleading or lacked key context about their subjects’ unique health problems, he conceded that the people of the Strip have experienced “deprivation” and said the new surge of aid was meant to address this.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.