After weeks of mounting pressure on Israel to address reports of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with longtime allies lining up to condemn the government or recognize a Palestinian state, the largest Jewish federation in the United States took a newsmaking step.

UJA-Federation of New York said it would allocate $1 million to IsraAID, a humanitarian organization in Israel that would provide clean water, medicine and food to be delivered to those hungry in Gaza. “Understanding that Hamas bears ultimate responsibility for this conflict does not negate that civilians in Gaza are facing desperate conditions,” UJA CEO Eric Goldstein wrote in a letter Aug. 8 announcing the allocation.

Jewish federations aren’t in the habit of donating to Palestinians, especially in wartime, and blowback from some givers and critics was inevitable. “Not everyone agrees on what should be done, or how,” Goldstein wrote.

That may have been an understatement. In the Facebook comments accompanying the announcement, following a scattering of positive reactions, the conversation turned vitriolic.

“Can you imagine Jews in WWII starting a campaign for Germans, in the midst of a war? This is obscene.”

“Why, nobody would ever help us.”

“Not one more dime for you UJA-Federation of New York. What about our hostages?????”

“The UJA-Federation of New York has committed a profound act of moral confusion. In allocating $1 million to provide aid to Gaza through IsraAID, the organization has chosen fashionable sentiment over its founding purpose. This represents charity as moral preening, divorced from Jewish interests and survival.”

Nearly two years into the war launched on Oct. 7, 2023 by the Hamas attacks on southern Israel, the Jewish conversation has shifted. Jews who have taken to social media to condemn Hamas, anti-Israel protesters and the colleges and politicians they say have enabled antisemitism are now turning on fellow Jews — and not just anti-Zionist Jews, who if anything united the mainstream in a common disdain.

The current conversation pits fierce defenders of Israel and the war in Gaza against what Rabbi Donniel Hartman, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, calls the “troubled committed”: Jews who support Israel and have defended the war to rout Hamas and bring home the hostages, but are deeply troubled by the reports of hunger, the extent of the destruction in Gaza and the enormous death toll among non-combatants there.

The acrimony between the two camps is seen on social media and in everyday conversations, where calls for showing compassion to the Gazans are met with accusations of naivete, hypocrisy and shirking responsibilities to fellow Jews. The discourse is fraying a community already feeling demoralized by rising antisemitism and what two Boston-area trauma therapists — Miri Bar-Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman — call

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