Vintage Israeli stamps depicting the Seven Species designed by Zvi Narkiss (צבי נרקיס, Israeli, 1921-2010), 1958.
The Seven Species (שבעת המינים, Shiv'at HaMinim) are two grains and five fruits mentioned in the Torah as special produce of the Land of Israel: wheat, barley, grape, fig, pomegranate, olive (oil), and date (honey). These staples were central to the diet of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel in biblical times and hold spiritual significance, as shown by the unique blessing recited after eating them to thank G-d for the land's abundance. Their first fruits were offered as bikkurim in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Succot is the time we ask the most profound question of what makes a life worth living. What matters is not how long we live, but how intensely we feel that life if a gift we repay by giving to others. Joy, the overwhelming theme of the festival, is what we feel when we know that it is a privilege simply to be alive.
The Jewish holiday of Succot starts this Friday night! One of the important rituals we do on this holiday is we take four specific plants and we put them in and we put them out and we put them in and we shake them all about!
These plants are collectively known as the Arba Minim (often translated to English as the Four Species) and you are in luck because I HAVE MADE A QUIZ TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE YOU ARE
Let’s start discussing Labour’s 2019 conference by going back to the murder of two rabbis in the Old City of Jerusalem in October 2015.
It was the Jewish festival of Succot and there were plenty of Jews heading to the Wailing Wall to pray. On that day Mohammad Halabi, a law student from a small town just North of Ramallah, went to the Old City of Jerusalem armed with a knife.
He came across a 22 year old rabbi called Aaron Benito on his way to pray with his wife, two year old son and their baby daughter. Halabi stabbed him and then stabbed his wife in the shoulder before he was accosted by another rabbi, Nehemia Lavi, a resident of the Old City who had heard the commotion and come to help.
Lavi was a reserve officer in the IDF and attended armed. Halabi stabbed Lavi and took his weapon which he used to shoot Benito’s two year old son in the leg. With a knife lodged in her shoulder Benito’s wife managed to run to a police outpost to call for help. Israeli police shot Halabi dead at the scene.
Both Lavi and Benito died of their wounds.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Halabi. The municipality of Surda Abu-Qash honoured Halabi by naming a street after him and the Palestine bar association granted him a law degree posthumously.
HP reported in 2016 Kamel Hawwash, now Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (at the time Vice Chair), quoted a Facebook post by Halabi and then said the following:
“I call him a martyr because I am speaking from a Palestinian perspective. I don’t care what the Israelis want to call him they want to call him a terrorist that’s up to them and that’s the point of…if you like the difference in attitude, he was killed by an Israeli soldier to us he’s a martyr. He might have committed an act people find unacceptable that is up to them. Actually I consider what he did an act of…an act of revenge for what the Israelis do to the Palestinians, so it’s an act of revenge… If the occupation wasn’t there he wouldn’t be doing what he did.”
Back to 2019 and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign fringe meeting:
