(RNS) — After 12 days of fighting between Israel and Iran, and with a potential ceasefire in the offing, the Jewish Federations of North America announced it would allocate $10 million in emergency funding to meet the needs of Israeli Jews.
The JFNA, the umbrella group for 141 Jewish federations across the United States and Canada, said on Monday (June 23) that the money comes from its Israel Emergency Fund set up in the days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
Since that attack, the JFNA has raised $897 million from American and Canadian Jews to help Israel recover and rebuild. About 90% of that funding has already been spent, which is increasingly going toward recovery and resilience building. Now, the organization is once again funding more immediate needs of food and housing, what it calls “lifeline services.”
“We had evolved into working more on midterm and long-term needs,” Rebecca Caspi, senior vice president and director general of JFNA’s Israel office, told RNS. “Now we’re back to urgent needs. But our goal is for Israel to stabilize and to be able to get back to meeting those needs that relate to recovery as soon as possible.”
Hundreds of Iranians are presumed killed, with exact numbers unknown, since Israel’s surprise airstrike attacks on Iran on June 13, intended to roll back the country’s nuclear buildup. Close to 30 Israelis were killed by Iranian missile strikes, Israeli medical officials reported, and hundreds, if not thousands, were left homeless after apartment buildings were destroyed. The latest Israeli casualties include four people killed in a missile strike in southern Israel early Tuesday morning.
Since that missile strike, in response to Israeli missiles on Iran, the ceasefire, brokered by President Donald Trump, appeared to be holding.
“We want every Israeli to know that the North American Jewish community has their backs, and will continue to step up in meaningful ways, whether that means supporting hospitals, upgrading conditions in public bomb shelters, or helping evacuees and victims of terror,” Jeff Schoenfeld, the incoming vice chair of JFNA’s board of trustees, said in a statement.
Of the $10 million the organization allotted to the Israel-Iran war victims, $2 million went to the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Fund for Victims of Terror, and another $2 million to Israeli hospitals, primarily Beersheva’s Soroka Medical Center, parts of which were heavily damaged in a recent Iranian missile strike. Three allocations totaling $1.5 million went to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
The JFNA funds hundreds of Israeli nonprofits and semi-government agencies. Separately, the United States government has awarded Israel nearly $18 billion since 2023 — the vast majority in military aid, as of last year.
While individual federations are able to determine for themselves how they want to disperse the money they raise annually, most federation-affiliated organizations allocate some of their money to the national body. Of the $897 million that federations raised for Israel since 2023, about $238 million was given to the central JFNA office to allocate to Israel as it sees fit, Caspi said.
“We’re seeking to ensure the highest and best use of every dollar, and that means that we have to be working in consultation with federations and foundations and the government, and all the other sources of support that organizations are able to access,” Caspi said. “Federations are far and away the largest source of philanthropic support for Israel throughout this.”
