The first Cooking Peace summer camp program wrapped up at the Ben Shemen Youth Village in central Israel with some forty teens, split between Jews and Arabs, concluding the week-long culinary program at a graduation ceremony on Friday.
The teens, most aged 15-17 and coming from all over Israel, participated in programming focused on building dialogue and relationships, environmentally sustainable cooking practices, and nutrition, among other things, the camp’s organizers said.
Among the camp’s activities was a two-day culinary workshop led by four professional chefs.
“The Cooking Peace camp is an initiative by the Green Network,” Myriam Charbit, the Cooking Peace camp director, told The Jerusalem Post at the graduation ceremony. “We have staff from all backgrounds in Israeli society. We have Arab facilitators, we have Jewish facilitators, even ultra-Orthodox and religious facilitators.”
Charbit added that the camp saw diversity as an element of Israeli society that “makes us better, makes us rich, makes us interesting.”
Cooking Peace summer camp program. August 3, 2026. (credit: Tsofit Damari, Cooking Peace, Green Network)Building bridges between people
While the Green Network has operated a variety of programs, this year was the first time the Cooking Peace summer camp took place; a medium, Charbit added, ideal for building bridges between people.
“Cooking is opening the eyes,” she said. “Cooking is about happiness, about connection, about being together, about talking and laughing and sharing experiences. And when you cook together, you can teach each other things.”
Maram Younis, a Muslim woman and a mother of three from northern Israel who’s been working with the Green Network for nearly a decade, partnered with Charbit to make the Cooking Peace camp happen.
“It was important for us to rely on values that are important for both sides, the Arab and the Jewish,” she said. “For each group, we had two instructors: one Jewish, one Arab. One speaking Arabic, one speaking Hebrew.”
Younis added that it was important to them to create an environment where the teens felt comfortable discussing difficult issues, such as those relating to the environment or to Jewish-Arab relations.
Despite coming from different backgrounds, though, Younis said that she believed they succeeded in finding areas where both Jews and Arabs could find agreement and build relationships.
The teen campers who spoke to the Post at the graduation ceremony echoed the sentiment.
Food - an incredible love language
“Food is such an incredible love language,” Noga, a Jewish teen from Tel Aviv, said. “With no actual language, it really connects everything and everybody.
She added that all the campers, both the Jewish and Arab teens, enjoyed the same things. They held similar interests, listened to the same music, and liked the same food. They also all learned a lot about each other, she said.
“It just shows us we're all the same people,” she said. “We’re not different.”
Nouran, a 15-year-old Arab Muslim girl from Akko, said that the camp also gave the teens the ability to learn from one another and correct false impressions.
“I had a conversation with a Jewish boy. He told me a lot of things about his religion that I didn't know, and I told him about mine as well,” she said. “For example, he had a lot of ideas about my religion, and I corrected them for him, and he also did that for me.”
One thing that surprised her, she said, was that a person could be Jewish while also not having a belief in God.
“The base of Islam is believing in God. If you don't believe in God, basically, you’re not Muslim,” Nouran said. “But in their religion, it's okay to not believe in God but still be Jewish.”
She added that she felt she had come away from the camp having a more nuanced perspective on other people.
“I've learned that I don't judge a nation (of people) from an idea that I get from one of them,” she said.
Uri, a Jewish teen from New York visiting Israel for the summer to see his family, reflected that all of his peers at the camp had been very friendly with him.
“There's many people that I'm gonna want to see later on, and I'm sure that we'll be friends for many more years,” he said.
While the relationships were built, he noted, the teens didn’t shy away from the more difficult conversations, where they shared their perspectives on political and cultural issues such as women' s rights, the regional conflicts, or the issues relating to local communities.
“Cooking really helped bind us together,” he said. “It just allows for the opportunity to talk to each other and learn about what they eat and how they live.”
Retal, a 16-year-old Muslim girl from Tayibe, said the week of cooking camp had been “the most beautiful experience,” adding that her peers had become “more than just friends,” saying they were “like a home.”
“I learned a lot of things,” she continued. “We are one nation. Like a family.”
Jolyana Khalil, one of the chefs who led the culinary workshop, said preparing food gave the teens a practical reason to cooperate, ask questions and learn from one another.
“Some things are done differently in an Arab home than in a Jewish home, so everyone brings their own background,” she told the Post. “They get exposed more to each other.”
Khalil, an Arab Christian from the northern village of Eilabun, began her professional life as a lawyer before pursuing a culinary career. She trained at Tel Aviv’s Brasserie and later received a scholarship to study culinary arts and management in France. The summer camp was the final project of the scholarship program.
The workshops she helped lead, Khalil recalled, forged bonds between the Jewish and the Arab teens.
While cooking, she said, the teens were open and asking questions, interacting in both Hebrew and Arabic, and comparing what they were working on. They also grew closer with song as they cooked.
“During the workshops, they would sing in both languages,” she said. “That was so beautiful.”
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