It is a hard moment to be an international development or humanitarian aid organization. It is an even harder moment to be an Israeli one.
Across the global aid sector, funding models are no longer merely under strain; they are contracting. Major donor governments are cutting aid budgets, humanitarian appeals are dramatically underfunded and international agencies are increasingly forced to ration assistance and narrow missions. The result is a system being pushed toward permanent triage.
These pressures are real and widespread. But Israeli development and humanitarian organizations are facing an additional, more corrosive challenge: They are being excluded.
A survey by the Society for International Development–Israel, conducted among Israeli nonprofits, for-profit firms and academic programs working in international development, put numbers to what many have experienced quietly for more than two years. Since Oct. 7, half of respondents reported declining donations. More than a third said they were struggling to secure multi-year funding. Nearly half said they had lost or scaled back overseas partnerships.
More troubling still, 60% reported antisemitic or anti-Israeli experiences, and a quarter said they felt pressured to declare their views on the Gaza war as a condition of participation. These ideological litmus tests have little to do with humanitarian performance and everything to do with politics. As a result, 40% said they had downplayed their Israeli identity or altered how they present their work.
This is not accountability. It is the ideological sorting of a field that once claimed universality.
Israeli aid organizations are hardly ideological outliers. Many are deeply liberal, rights-focused and directly involved in humanitarian relief, including work connected to Gaza itself. Yet they are increasingly treated as suspect, not because of what they do, but because of who they are. Conferences become inhospitable. Partnerships quietly dissolve. Emails go unanswered. Visibility in global forums disappears, not for lack of expertise, but from fear of backlash.
The cost is not borne only by Israelis. When capable actors are pushed out of the humanitarian ecosystem, communities in need lose experienced partners, innovative tools and hard-won operational knowledge. The sector becomes narrower, more brittle and less effective.
At a moment when hunger crises are worsening in parts of Africa and aid agencies are warning of severe service reductions, ideological exclusion is becoming a luxury the humanitarian system cannot afford.
And yet the survey also reveals remarkable resilience.
Most Israeli organizations did not close. They adapted. They absorbed losses. They continued working — often under harsher conditions and with fewer resources — because humanitarian commitment does not depend on external permission.
There are also early signs of recalibration. Some Jewish philanthropists, disillusioned with the politicization of international aid spaces, are redirecting support toward Israeli and Jewish development organizations. New funding models, including private-sector partnerships, are gaining traction.
Still, adaptation alone is not a strategy.
A credible path forward requires three things. First, donors must distinguish legitimate scrutiny from ideological exclusion. Demanding transparency and ethical conduct is appropriate; demanding political conformity is not. Second, Israeli organizations must resist the temptation to disappear, recognizing that long-term legitimacy comes from showing up visibly and professionally. And third, the aid community must confront a basic question: Is humanitarianism a universal enterprise, or a political club?
Humanitarian aid cannot survive as a purity test. And it cannot afford to sideline those still willing to do the work.
