More than a hundred other nations, most of them impoverished, are facing devastating repercussions following Donald Trump's decision to cut funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), one of the world’s largest aid organizations and the primary channel for U.S. foreign assistance. These countries can do little but watch in despair as more than $60 billion in aid—a financial lifeline for many—is wiped out overnight.

American aid dollars funded tens of thousands of jobs and critical projects in healthcare, environmental protection, food security, and more. In Ethiopia, for example, over a million people immediately lost access to food aid the moment Trump signed an executive order imposing a near-total freeze on foreign assistance. In Senegal, the country’s largest anti-malaria initiative was forced to shut down. In Somalia, dozens of medical centers closed their doors. The scope of affected programs is expanding.

The shockwaves from Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid have also reached Israeli organizations. Shomrim spoke with the heads of multiple Israeli groups that, until recently, had received a total of at least $55 million annually from USAID. They described the significant impact of Trump’s decision across different sectors in Israel—many of which remain unknown to most Israelis.

Larry Garber, who served as mission director of USAID operations in Israel and the Palestinian Authority from 1999 to 2004, said that the agency has funded hospitals, educational initiatives, the construction of new schools, and water purification projects in collaboration with the Israeli Water Authority. This includes, "the construction of several water purification plants that Israel deemed essential to prevent sewage from flowing into the Negev and other parts of the country," Garber said. 

"Around thirty percent of our funding comes from USAID. We have operations in Haifa, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Now, we’ve had no choice but to lay off a third of our staff," said a senior executive from another Israeli NGO. 

Like dozens of others interviewed by Shomrim for this article—including current and former USAID employees as well as Israelis who previously received funding from the agency—the senior manager requested anonymity, citing concerns that, in the current political climate, his statements could be used against him and his organization.

One interviewee who was willing to be identified by name is Gidi Grinstein, founder and president of the Reut Group, a  non-profit policy think tank established about 20 years ago. Today, the organization also focuses on innovation through Reut USA, which leverages modern technologies—such as 3D printing—to assist people with physical disabilities, including injured soldiers and children in need of prosthetic limbs.

According to Grinstein, up to thirty percent of Reut USA’s operational budget in Israel came from USAID. One of their projects entailed delivering wheelchairs for toddlers to families that were referred to the organization by the welfare department of the municipality of Jerusalem. “All participants in that event - creators of wheelchairs and their recipients - came from all stripes of Israeli society, including from a nearby Haredi community and from Arab East Jerusalem,” Grinstein said.

Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, chair of the Department of Health Systems Management at Ben-Gurion University’s School of Public Health, also received USAID grants on a number of occasions, including to launch a project, in cooperation with colleagues from the Palestinian Authority, into Leishmania – a potentially fatal parasitic disease spread by sandflies. The goal of the project, which has now been frozen, was to analyze the environmental causes and other risks associated with the disease. According to Davidovitch, some Israeli soldiers who recently came from fighting in the Gaza Strip contracted the disease.

“The fact that Israelis and Palestinians were working together was important,” Davidovitch told Shomrim. “Firstly, because the health of the Palestinian people is important in and of itself; and secondly, because diseases and environmental hazards do not respect political boundaries. There are health phenomena that must be addressed on a regional level in order to fully understand them and tackle them,” Davidovitch said.

Trump and Musk decided: ‘It’s Time for USAID to die’

The aggressive American approach to USAID is being spearheaded by President Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire who was appointed to head Trump’s new government efficiency body, known as DOGE. In one post on X – the social media platform owned by Musk – the billionaire called USAID “a criminal organization” that promotes a radical left-wing agenda. “Time for it to die,” Musk concluded.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the purge of USAID programs was now complete, with 83% of the agency's programs eliminated. A legal battle over the cut is still ongoing in courts and a U.S. district judge ordered the Trump administration on Monday to pay nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance owed to organizations around the world. 

Nevertheless, organizations dependent on USAID funding are uncertain about their future finances, and this unpredictability has led several to lay off staff. Almost all the aid workers who are employed directly by USAID were put on paid administrative leave by the Trump administration on February 24.

“On January 24, we got an email from Washington instructing us to halt all operations connected to USAID,” a senior executive of an Israeli NGO told Shomrim. “After that, we got a follow-up message saying that we could contact them with questions to clarify the situation, but, when we did, no one got back to us. There’s a lot of uncertainty. The aid has been frozen for three months. Is somebody going to pay salaries? What am I supposed to do with my staff? How can we start planning next year’s activities?,” the manager said.

As of today, several Israeli organizations report that they are not only unable to plan ahead but are also uncertain whether they will be reimbursed for projects they already financed, assuming that USAID would cover the costs. Many of the grants issued by USAID are officially categorized as "expenses." In other words, organizations must first fund their projects independently and only receive reimbursement retrospectively—after USAID officials have reviewed and approved them.

Several managers of NGOs that operate in Israel and the Palestinian territories who spoke to Shomrim  about Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid said that they were completely blindsided by the announcement. One director of an Israeli NGO said that just one week before Trump’s announcement to cut funding he met in Israel with a senior USAID official who was completely calm. 

“He wasn’t at all worried” about the future of American foreign aid under President Trump, the Israeli director said, adding that the U.S. official told him that USAID funding was “more or less guaranteed.”

“We couldn’t spend a single shekel without getting approval,” one Israeli NGO executive said. “It’s not like they just give you money and you can do whatever you want with it.”

Israel follows America’s footsteps

The uncertainty over the future of USAID is particularly worrying for Palestinian organizations which relied on American funding, said Gidi from REUT USA. “Israeli nonprofit organizations tend to have multiple sources of income from world Jewry and I believe that most will weather the storm. But for many of our partners on the Palestinian side, where such diversity of funding sources does not exist, the halt in USAID activities is often devastating,” he said. 

For example, USAID funded scholarships that allowed young Palestinians from the West Bank to study in the United States, with the goal of fostering a new, educated elite in Palestinian society, Garber, the former USAID official said. “The types of programs that USAID implements provide some opportunities for Palestinians that if they didn't have, who knows what they would be doing instead,” Garber said. 

In recent years, under the Netanyahu government, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories worked closely with USAID. Grinstein from REUT USA said that COGAT's logistical and administrative assistance was invaluable to his organization and continued even during the ongoing war in Gaza.

This support continued in the hardest of times, suggesting the importance of the programs for Israel. Even during the course of the second intifada, “we had very close ties with the government and specifically with the IDF, via COGAT. Our impression was always that the Israeli government viewed the work that USAID did as critical for Israeli security,” Garber said.

In a change of stance, Israeli ministers from the Netanyahu government and Knesset members are currently coming out in support of Trump’s decision to cut funding to USAID. Some were quick to propose their own new measures against nongovernmental bodies which receive what they referred to as “foreign funding.” 

Minister of Diaspora Amichai Chikli (Likud), for example, claimed that a cement factory in Gaza that was built with donations from USAID “helped create Hamas’ terror tunnels.” Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Yitzhak Kroizer, meanwhile, wrote a personal letter to Musk, demanding “access to available information regarding subsidies and grants provided to non-governmental organizations, media outlets, and individual journalists operating in Israel.” 

According to Kroizer, “publicly available sources already indicate that USAID and other U.S. government agencies have allocated millions of dollars to these entities within a relatively short period of time.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own son, Yair, claimed in a social media post earlier this month that “USAID was involved in color revolutions attempts in Israel!”

Some lawmakers went even further. At the same time as the Trump administration was freezing funding to USAID, MK Ariel Kellner (Likud) submitted legislation to the Knesset which would impose an 80-percent tax on donations from foreign governments to Israeli organizations. The intended target of such a move would be civil-society organizations that are largely critical of the government and its policies. 

“This bill comes at the worst possible time for Israeli NGOs,” said one manager of an Israeli NGO. “If your organization gets its funding from the European Union and from USAID, you are in deep trouble,”he said. He added that it would be extremely difficult for such organizations to get funding from other governments, especially if Israel imposes an 80-percent tax.

While many current members of the coalition are now vocally opposed to USAID today, some ministers conveyed support for the aid organization in the past. In 2019, for example, Israel Katz – then Minister of Foreign Affairs and current Minister of Defense – signed a memorandum to strengthen the global partnership between USAID and Mashav, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation in a televised ceremony promoted by his office. 

“It will increase our possibilities to continue working together in areas such as water, health, agriculture, and high-tech,” Katz said at the time of the signing of the partnership.  

Israelis who have enjoyed USAID support in previous years reject the allegations about a lack of transparency at USAID and accusations that aid earmarked for humanitarian purposes ended up in the hands of groups linked to terrorist activities. They say that the USAID supervision process is extremely rigorous, with in-depth background checks into all of the group’s employees and everyone who participated in activities organized by the group, as well as frequent supervisory inspections by USAID officials in person.

 “We couldn’t spend a single shekel without getting approval,” one Israeli NGO executive said. “It’s not like they just give you money and you can do whatever you want with it.”

Another NGO executive summed up his feelings: “It’s incredibly sad to see these wonderful programs collapsing and these incredible people being fired.”