For over 75 years, USAID has stood as America’s moral and strategic outpost – providing humanitarian relief, economic support, and social development to communities around the world. Its goal is simple yet profound: to heal where there is suffering, to minimize conflict, to ensure basic human dignity, and to build bridges between peoples. When forced to choose between war and windows of cooperation, USAID offered the latter – investing in hope, stability, and shared prosperity.
As a USAID MEPPA grantee, Tsofen-Tashbik was privileged to embody this mission. For 16 years, our Arab-Jewish partnership organization has integrated Israel’s Arab citizens – and Palestinians from the West Bank – into the country’s booming hi-tech sector.
In contrast to our previous USAID grants, our latest was cross-border, meaning that, for the first time, we dared to cross both literal and psychological borders, bringing together young engineers from three communities – Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and West Bank Palestinians – around the shared language of innovation.
What Tsofen-Tashbik has accomplished
In practical terms, since 2008, we have:
Placed one-third of all Arab engineers in Israel’s hi-tech firms.
Trained and mentored thousands through advanced tech boot camps, leadership workshops, and internship placements.
Engaged 10,000 Arab students in academic hi-tech programs across Israel, preparing them for a job market that so often raises barriers they cannot clear alone.
Much of this was made possible by reliable USAID funding – funding that was abruptly halted by a presidential executive order in January 2025 and summarily canceled the following month. In a single stroke, along with 80% of all USAID grantees, our grant vanished. A “cold turkey” cut with no transition plan, no safety net, and no regard for the real people who rely on these programs – our trainees, our staff, our partner companies. An entire ecosystem has been severely disrupted.
President Donald Trump argued that these cuts would “streamline” foreign aid and protect American interests. But we must ask: What truly serves US security and prosperity? When USAID programs succeed in building livelihoods, reducing poverty, and bridging ethnic or national divides, they create stability where armies cannot – saving American lives and taxpayer dollars in the process.
The alternative to USAID program achievements
Consider the alternative: Without conflict resolution and development aid, tensions escalate. Armed interventions become the default, and America is drawn further into wars, at tremendous human and financial cost. History is replete with painful examples that demonstrate this. In Ukraine, in the Middle East, we see how the absence of preventive aid forces US troops into harm’s way and burdens the national budget with trillions spent on conflict rather than constructive growth.
Here in Israel, the cancellation of USAID funding has pushed Tsofen-Tashbik and similar organizations into a deep financial crisis. We have cut staff and are scaling back programs, just as the war in Gaza throws Israel’s economy into recession.
The very engineers we train – thousands of Arab graduates eager to fuel recovery and innovation – face a bleak future. The hi-tech sector, once Israel’s engine of growth, will lack the talent it needs to rebound.
Yet, these are exactly the resources Israel – and by extension, America – cannot afford to lose. Arab citizens represent over 20% of Israel’s population and constitute the largest untapped pool of qualified hi-tech talent. Their full inclusion could add billions of dollars annually to Israel’s GDP and strengthen the social fabric on both sides of the Green Line.
That is the promise of global aid when it works: It nurtures local solutions that ripple outward. It transforms potential adversaries into collaborators. It strengthens democracies by lifting people out of despair and into productive roles. It is both values-driven and an investment – an insurance policy against the costliest crises.
To our American friends, we urge you to remember that behind every budget line are human lives. When we cut aid “cold turkey,” we freeze real people out of opportunity and force the US into deeper, costlier entanglements. America’s true national interest lies in backing programs that build bridges, not walls; that foster jobs, not just armies; that create partnerships, not only deployments.
To the American administration, I say: If you don’t like USAID programs, create your own, but preserve the global human values at their heart, which you share. You decide what to fund and how to allocate resources, but don’t give up the opportunity to affect lives around the world and the lives of your own citizens, for all our lives on this planet are intertwined.
We call on your representatives in Congress and the White House to restore – and even expand – US funding for programs that build bridges, reduce conflict, and forge cohesive communities around shared interests, like ours. Give us the resources to train the next generation of engineers, to bridge divides through code, creativity, and innovation, and to prove that the best path to lasting peace is by building a shared future.
The alternative – abandoning hope, ignoring opportunities, and reopening old wounds – is a cost America cannot afford. And it is a moral and economic compromise we must never make.
Maisam Jaljuli is CEO and Merav Boaz is deputy CEO of Tsofen-Tashbik, an Arab-Jewish partnership organization.