Group spearheaded by Olam brings 22 Jewish and Israeli humanitarian figures to AidEx, amid reports of shunning and antisemitism in the field

In the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, many Israeli and Jewish humanitarian-aid professionals have felt isolated. Their peers have often adopted strong anti-Israel views, with many calling the war a genocide and some even celebrating the Hamas-led massacres. Due to boycotts, Israeli aid initiatives have struggled to attain funding from foreign sources, and aid workers have reported being exposed to discrimination and hostility at work and international conferences.

So it was perhaps no surprise that the State of Israel had no official representation at last week’s AidEx conference, one of the largest gatherings of humanitarian-aid professionals in the world, despite the country regularly taking part in international relief operations following natural and man-made disasters. At the same time, other countries — including South Korea, China, the U.K., Ireland, Denmark, and Sweden, as well as countries Israel doesn’t have diplomatic relations with such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia — had a large presence.

To ensure a Jewish and Israeli presence and to have a seat at the table at AidEx, despite the lack of an official welcome, Olam, Society of International Development Israel and Nura Global Innovation Lab partnered to bring a 22-person delegation representing eight countries to Geneva for the conference, which was held on Oct. 21-22.

The event was attended by 3,500 workers representing U.N. agencies, NGOs and governments and is actually two conferences under one banner — the core AidEx conference, which is focused on humanitarian aid, and Development2030, which focuses on sustainable development goals — with programming overlapping. This year’s theme was “Beyond Delivering ‘More with Less.’”

It was important for aid workers, Jewish and non-Jewish, to attend this year because the field is struggling after the closure by the Trump administration of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and global budget cuts, Yael Shapira, Olam’s director of network engagement and programs, who led the delegation, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “The whole sector has changed immensely,” she said. “So it’s a good place to hear about that and learn about some best practices and what people are shifting towards.”

Attending with a delegation offered Jewish aid workers a built-in support system. More than ever, delegates said, their presence was essential to show the world that Jews and Israel were making a difference in the humanitarian aid sector. While there were several fraught interactions on the floor, the conference overall was positive, delegates said, and attendees made relationships that crossed borders and ideologies.

The Olam group represented workers in global health, refugee support, climate resilience, disaster response and social impact. They were chosen from Olam’s global network of humanitarian aid workers, SID Israel’s network of Israeli aid workers and Nura Global’s community of tech innovators who support the Global South. The three umbrella organizations’ networks overlap, so the partnership was natural, Shapira said.

Delegates came from Mexico, the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, Canada, Germany and Spain, but the delegation was heavily Israeli. The goal was to bring leaders from organizations who can pass on what they’ve learned.

When Shapira last attended AidEx in 2022 in Belgium, she didn’t worry about other attendees’ reactions to her Israeli background. “It was just like, ‘I come from the field of international development. This is a great place to learn,’ and people didn’t think twice about who I was, and [I didn’t worry about] how I would introduce myself,’” she said.

Arriving at this year’s AidEx “was almost like landing in a parallel universe where Israel almost doesn’t exist,” Nicole Kuttler, one of the delegates and the general manager of the Nitsan Lab for Sustainable Development at Tel Aviv University, told eJP.

‍Pushing Back on Quiet Boycotts, Delegation Highlights Jewish Israeli Aid Workers... Continue reading

This article was originally published in eJewish Philanthropy's Your Daily Phil on October 28, 2026.