Maybe da Jooooos aren’t so evil after all.

MAFRAQ, Jordan — The purple plastic sacks fill two rooms in the otherwise sparsely furnished headquarters of a Jordanian NGO, awaiting distribution to Syrian refugees already lined up on the sidewalk.

They contain an array of staple dry goods — lentils, pasta, powdered milk, tea — as well as a range of hygiene products like soap and detergent, enough for 250 refugee families. But before the goods are handed out, one thing will be removed — the word “Jewish.”

Going sack by sack with a pair of scissors, an aid worker begins to cut.

“We don’t announce with trumpets that we’re Israeli,” the worker says. “There’s no need for that. Once you let that cat out of the bag, everything starts to blow up.”

The sacks are paid for by IsraAid, an Israeli nonprofit that provides disaster relief and humanitarian aid across the world. The group has provided medical care and psychological services following earthquakes in Japan and Haiti, and supplies food and other materials to refugees at two camps in Kenya.

IsraAid began working in Jordan early this year. Since then, the organization says it has provided approximately $100,000 worth of supplies to refugees who have escaped Syria’s brutal civil war.

But because Syria and Israel technically have been at war for four decades, discretion and security are paramount in IsraAid’s Jordanian operation. Most aid workers interviewed requested anonymity, as did the Jordanian nongovernmental organization that is IsraAid’s partner on the ground. Working with Israelis, they say, could endanger their work and the lives of the refugees they help.