Thanks for asking, tamgent! My guess is that people with the goal of saving lives had better donate to GiveWell’s top charities[1]:
Apparently, “the U.N. humanitarian office said on Friday it would cost an estimated $1.2 billion to meet the needs of 2.7 million people”, i.e. 444 $/person (= 1.2*10^9/(2.7*10^6)).
The median cost to save a life among GiveWell’s top charities is 5 k$.
This means satisfying the needs of each of the 2.7 M people would have to be as good as saving 0.0888 lives (= 444/(5*10^3)). According to Open Phil, “GiveWell uses moral weights for child deaths that would be consistent with assuming 51 years of foregone life in the DALY framework (though that is not how they reach the conclusion)”, so satisfying the needs one person would have to extend its healthy life expectancy by 4.53 years (= 0.0888*51).
I think it is unlikely that satisfying the needs would results in such large benefit. Healthy life expectancy at birth in the Palestine was 61.8 in 2016, which means satisfying the needs of one person would have to extend it by 7.33 % (= 4.53/61.8). I believe this can be thought of as satisfying the needs being equivalent to eliminating a 7.33 % risk of death of 2.7 million, which seems a clear overestimate of the real risk.
On the one hand, there may be interventions which satisfy the needs at much higher cost-effectiveness than the suggested above. On the other, this issue may have low neglectedness and tractability.
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I am not confident these are good/bad due to indirect effects (e.g. effects on animals).
You may draw some ideas from when this topic was previously discussed here.
It seems that currently the bottleneck is not funding for orgs that provide humanitarian aid, but rather Israel’s willingness to allow that humanitarian aid to get to the civilians that need it.
The Israeli government and individuals within it seem to have some myopic incentives to cause harm to civilians, including: (1) as a lever over Hamas; (2) for the purpose of increasing its deterrence against
LebanonHezbollah and in general; and (3) perhaps for the purpose of eventually causing civilians to flee to Egypt.Unrelated note: This is an extremely contentious political issue around the world and especially in the US. We should consider that the involvement of EA in such issues can be harmful. It seems relevant to note here this AMA post about this war, from a seemingly strongly pro-Israel author who so far never wrote anything on this forum (from that account) outside that AMA. That post currently has 62 karma points.
Disclosure: I have served in Israel Defense Forces, live in Israel, feel horrible about what Israel has done so far to Palestinians and about the current war, and I do not want Israel to end up as a horrible stain on human history. I am probably unusually biased when dealing with this topic.
As an Israeli that cares for life regardless of nationality, this is an issue that I deeply struggle with. So do note that I’m not objective here, and yet I do care about objectiveness and try to stick to facts and objective ethical considerations.
Also, me being part of the situation means that I know about it more than an average person that does not live in Israel, so I hope to contribute to the discussion.
Before I share my ideas about supporting Gaza civilians, I want to share some of the points that should be considered here.
First point is that there are more than 2 sides in this equation.
Israel can and should be seen as one side. It is democratic, and therefore the government accurately represents the people.
Gaza includes 2 groups of people—the Palestinian civilians and Hamas organization. Hamas is an evil ISIS-inspired terrorist organization that officially aims to eliminate Israel and acts in the most evil methods imaginable. Since 2006, Hamas controls Gaza by force. It does have a strong support from many of its people, yet often the interests of the organization are contradictory to those of the civilians, and in these cases Hamas has the upper hand.
How evil is Hamas? Let’s see some examples. I present them because the methods of Hamas dictate what can and can’t be done to truly help the civilians, as long as Hamas controls the area.
Hamas uses (Palestinian) women and children as human shields. Israel asked and demanded civilians to move to the south of Gaza as the northern part of the strip became a war zone. Hamas blocked the road south and ordered civilians to stay. Hamas attacks from the underground of hospitals and other civilian areas—forcing Israel to harm civilians in its goal to fight Hamas.
Since Hamas controls Gaza, they can prioritize military goals over humanitarian ones. Any aid that goes to the people in Gaza will first go to Hamas. For example, any fuel supplied to Gaza is first used for activities such as firing rockets, and not for moving people to safety.
There are still hostages held in Gaza in unknown conditions. Some of them women, children, elderly and even babies. IMO this cannot be normalized even in the best conditions possible.
Hamas has relationships with other terror organizations such as Hezbollah. That is another reason why negotiating with Hamas will lead to more harm; If Hamas is not “punished” for its horrendous actions, it will signal other enemies of Israel that Israel will not punish them as well, and that attacking the country will be worth the price—especially if they don’t play by the humane rules.
Understand that any international pressure on Israel to help civilians that ignores Hamas’s illegitimate methods and the fact the hostages are still held captive, plays into the hands of Hamas, encouraging them to worsen the lives of Palestinians and hostages in Gaza, as it benefits their military purposes.
Now that we understand how evil is Hamas and how hard it is to help civilians without helping Hamas instead, here are two thoughts about helping Palestinians in Gaza:
I considered recommending about MSF—Doctors without Borders organization. But it’s complicated, and I currently believe it to be non-effective, at least for the current conflict.
MSF were already in Gaza before October 7th, giving medical aid and improving the humanitarian situation. A bit after the war started they decided to move to the southern area and help from there. The fact that they are already familiar with Gaza, and probably understand the complexity and risks, encouraged me to support their activity. This organization was also discussed in the previous forum about this topic.
However, aside from their work on-site, it seems they are using pro-Hamas terminology in their messages to the press, encouraging Israel to cease fire unconditionally and allow fuel and supplies to enter Gaza, regardless the risks and considerations I mentioned above.
I believe that donating to MSF won’t get more doctors in Gaza, but rather amplify the voice of those who side with Hamas’s interests. It might allow them to get more resources for future causes, which I think can be okay. But it’s hard for me to say where the money would go to inside this global organization, and whether it will be worth the risk of amplifying Hamas’s voice.
2. Currently—no countries allow Palestinian refugees from Gaza to enter. I don’t know of an organization that presses or encourages countries to do so, and I think that if countries would allow Palestinian refugees (especially Egypt) it could drastically help the civilians to temporarily escape the unimaginable reality in the area.
Obviously, nothing here is easy. Most countries would probably not crack under any pressure to allow more refugees in these times. But maybe some will, and if so, the I believe that the technicalities will be sorted out quickly enough.
...
Obviously, temporarily relocating thousands of Palestinians, most of them innocent, is not the most ideal or tractable thing to hope for, and many will not find it sufficient to ease their conscience even if it did happen. But I currently don’t have better realistic ideas, as I’ve come to believe that in the long term, nothing good will come of (unintentionally) helping Hamas. To anyone.
Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that cares about their God and their land more than it cares about life, is aware of the values of liberals, and uses them against us.
It does not mean we should let the sufferings reach infinity before we help Hamas—we can’t completely lose our values. But we have to be smart and aware of Hamas’s devious strategy & tactics, and foresee its reaction to our aid.
With the current bombardment, people in Gaza are being killed at an average rate of 2,500 lives lost per week and about 6,000 injured per week. Lets assume that this amounts to about 4,000 life-equivalents per week assuming that each injured person is losing 0.25 of a life on average. These estimates may be low, as there are many people missing in the rubble who are not included in these figures.
The government of Israel appears to be committed to continuing the bombardment for a long time in spite of the civilian casualty rate. So it appears that if there is a charity that can have an influence on decreasing the length of time that the government of Israel bombards Gaza civilians, this would be cost-effective for EAs if this influence cost less than 4000 x $5000/life = $20 million for every week of Gaza civilian bombardment that is avoided.
It is more or less a political question of determining how the length of the bombardment time can be lessened. But if there is an organization that you think might actually have an impact of decreasing bombardment time by a week, and if they have a budget of less than $20 million, then such an organization might be cost-effective from an EA perspective.
I hope this suggested approach is useful to you.
As a follow-up: Jewish Voice for Peace seems to be having a big influence in pushing for a cease-fire, and their annual budget is about $3 million per year:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/900018359
So if their influence can decrease the bombardment of Gaza by more than just two days! They might actually be more cost-effective than GiveWell at saving lives!
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
I would advise against. It is too likely to be used for terror purposes and be directly counterproductive. There is plenty of evidence as Hamas is not shy about it. Hamas has historically taxed anything coming into Gaza (especially through the tunnels). It also repurposed aid for military use many times (it has a propaganda video where it digs up pipes installed by the EU and used them as rockets). Today, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, called for a “money Jihad” where people donate to Gaza so that Hamas can keep waging war. Generally the exact number is unknown but it is estimated Hamas used billions of dollars in aid to purchase and smuggle arms, and many of its leaders also embezzle much of the money. In addition there is already a backup of hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid waiting to arrive in Gaza, so aid is not the bottleneck. All we can hope for is that the fighting finishes as soon as possible. So I think there are 2 options: I believe I saw an initiative to set up aid airdrops over Gaza. It was by Ahmed Alkhoutib at the FDD I believe? Maybe there is a way to support it. Additionally, Donating to rebuild Gaza afterwards though (specially after most of the world has moved on to the next thing) could be valuable.