Member of the Bundestag and agricultural policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag Rainer Spiering visits Israel
At the beginning of his trip MdB Spiering met the International Secretary of the Israel Farmers’ Federation, Avshalom Vilan, as well as the Director of the FES Israel Office Herzliya Paul Pasch and FES Project Manager Micky Drill. Among the topics discussed at the dinner were the future of the Kibbutz movement in Israel and the state of agriculture in Israel and Germany.
Subsequently, FES Israel organized a meeting with Eran Hermoni, Secretary General of the Israeli Labor Party, in which FES Israel Office Director Paul Pasch and FES Project Manager Judith Stelmach also participated. The topics of the meeting were the situation of the Israeli Labor Party after the elections and strategies of social democracy in Israel and Germany to regain the confidence of the voters, which has fallen significantly in recent years.
Spiering’s focus on agricultural policy then led to a Bedouin shepherd accompanied by Dr. Yeela Raanan, anthropologist and representative of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouin Villages. In addition to talks about life and agriculture in the desert, insights were given into the structures of Bedouin life and the difficulties faced by unrecognized Bedouin villages in southern Israel.
On the eve of the Israeli Shoah Memorial Day, MdB Spiering attended together with Paul Pasch and Judith Stelmach a memorial service at the Performing Arts Center in Beer Sheva. In Israel, the Shoah Memorial Day takes place on the Nisan 27 of the Jewish Calender, which began this year on the evening of May 1 and ended on the evening of May 2. The ceremony traditionally began with the lighting of six candles by six Holocaust survivors, representing the six million Holocaust victims.
A moving highlight was the play performed by an Israeli school class that portrayed the lives of the Sephardic Jews of Thessaloniki, a once thriving Jewish city. The focus was on the fate of two Jews born in Thessaloniki who got to know and love each other in Auschwitz, survived and went to Israel together. Finally, the couple’s daughter, representing the whole family, spoke about the fate of her parents and emphasized the importance of such commemorations, which keep up important memories.
