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People take part in a cooking workshop at Sindyanna of Galilee in Kafr Kanna, northern Israel, in an undated photograph. (Courtesy)<\/p>\nKAFR KANNA, Israel \u2014 For two decades, Sindyanna of Galilee built its model on a simple three-step premise: sell high-quality, fair-trade olive oil from Arab Israeli farmers to international markets; funnel profits back into an empowerment collective for Arab women; and prove that commerce could build bridges between Jews and Arabs in the Galilee.<\/p>\n
By early October 2023, it was working. Seventy percent of its revenue came from exports \u2014 to the British company Zeytun, American buyers like Dr. Bronner\u2019s and customers across Europe who valued the quality, the values and the cheerful, optimistic packaging. The cooking workshops at its visitors center in Kafr Kanna brought Jewish Israelis into Arab villages to learn traditional Galilean cuisine alongside Arab women, demonstrating that coexistence wasn\u2019t just a talking point \u2014\u00a0it was delicious.<\/p>\n
Then came Oct. 7.<\/p>\n
After the Hamas terror attacks and the launch of Israel\u2019s war against the terrorist organization in Gaza, longtime customers from abroad cut ties, not because of quality concerns, but because the products came from Israel, according to Hanan Manadreh Zoabi, co-manager of Sindyanna\u2019s Visitors Center. The word \u201cIsraeli\u201d on the label \u2014 even for an Arab-led, women-empowering, peace-building enterprise \u2014 became toxic. Zeytun stopped ordering. Seventy percent of its revenue evaporated.<\/p>\n
At home, Jewish Israelis stopped coming to the cooking workshops. The fear of entering Arab villages, even for an explicitly coexistence-focused program, became insurmountable. The visitors\u2019 center sat quiet.<\/p>\n
\u201cJewish Israelis are afraid to come to Arab village courses now,\u201d Zoabi told eJewishPhilanthropy last week. The international market rejected them for being Israeli. The Israeli market feared them for being Arab.<\/p>\n
But Sindyanna \u2014 a self-sustaining organization that runs like a business but functions as an NGO, cycling all profits back into programming \u2014 isn\u2019t folding. Instead, it\u2019s doubling down on the most challenging path: winning over Jewish Israelis one bottle at a time.<\/p>\n
Sindyanna\u2019s team is betting that its optimistic branding will help. Instead of just \u201cextra virgin,\u201d its olive oil is labeled \u201cExtra Positive,\u201d \u201cExtra Peaceful\u201d and \u201cExtra Hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe local market is now most important for us. More than overseas,\u201d Nadio Giol, Sindyanna\u2019s co-manager of the visitor center, told eJP. \u201cWe want to spread our message of hopefulness. The Israeli population is who we want to share our message of equality and democracy with.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an ironic twist. For years, Sindyanna exported its coexistence story to sympathetic audiences abroad, people who already believed in the mission. Now, financial necessity is forcing them to do what they always truly wanted: reach the Israelis who live alongside them but remain strangers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen one person puts our oil on their counter,\u201d Giol said, \u201cthat is a start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sindyanna didn\u2019t begin with grand ambitions. In 1993, a group of women in the Galilee town of Majd al-Krum noticed that Arab farmers in the region were sitting on exceptional olive oil but had no path to market. Sindyanna started packaging and selling it from a single room.<\/p>\n
The name, Sindyanna, is symbolic, referring to the Palestine oak, also known as the kermes oak, which dots the Galilee landscape \u2014 a tree known for deep roots, longevity and endurance. By 2003, it had become Israel\u2019s only World Fair Trade Organization-certified producer, a status it\u2019s maintained through an intifada, countless military operations, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing two-plus years of war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not easy to maintain a high level of fair trade,\u201d Zoabi said. Every bottle requires documentation, quality control, fair pricing negotiations with farmers and adherence to international standards, which many producers find burdensome.<\/p>\n
Once the organization sells the oil that it has purchased from some 200 small Arab farmers, the profits go into programs for Arab women. This includes hydroponics training, cooking workshops with celebrity Israeli chefs and a home-based tourism program designed to give women economic independence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe women didn\u2019t know they had something here they could do something with,\u201d Zoabi said of the early days. Those same women now teach biodynamic beekeeping and run culinary programs. \u201cThere\u2019s no high-tech here,\u201d she added. \u201cThere are olives.\u201d<\/p>\n
People take part in a cooking workshop at Sindyanna of Galilee in Kafr Kanna, northern Israel, in an undated photograph. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n
But the road has been rocky. The Second Intifada in 2001 devastated local sales, prompting the strategic shift toward exports. Then, the pandemic forced it to shutter the cooking workshops. \u201cWe were crushed,\u201d Giol recalled. But she and her team rebuilt, relaunching the programs just before the Hamas attacks. In 2023, the post-intifada export model was also thriving.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, with export revenue slashed and the visitors center sitting quiet, Sindyanna\u2019s pivot to the domestic olive oil market isn\u2019t just about survival, according to Zoabi and Giol, it\u2019s about returning to its core mission of coexistence.<\/p>\n
Zoabi pointed to the core of the problem geographically. \u201cWe live here in Kafr Kanna, and next door is Kibbutz Beit Rimon. Our kids never play together, and they never meet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The communities are neighbors. They share roads, regional infrastructure, a view, but the children grow up as strangers. \u201cIf we don\u2019t put our energy into trying to bridge our gaps, it won\u2019t happen,\u201d she said. \u201cFood is the best way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sindyanna\u2019s staff includes both Arab and Jewish women, who work side by side at the visitors center and warehouse. It\u2019s also why the collapse of the cooking workshops stung particularly hard. Before the war, famous Israeli chefs donated their time to run sessions bringing Jewish and Arab women together over traditional Galilean recipes. The workshops weren\u2019t just culinary \u2014 they were structured encounters designed to break down mistrust through shared experience.<\/p>\n
Now that\u2019s on hold. And while Sindyanna has built an online community of 5,000 supporters, digital connection can\u2019t replace the intimacy of cooking side by side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a person comes here for a workshop and meets Hanan,\u201d Giol said, \u201cthey see she is a regular person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KAFR KANNA, Israel \u2014 For two decades, Sindyanna of Galilee built its model on a simple three-step premise:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-258407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}