West Bank Town Names Street After East Jerusalem Killer

Image by Getty Images
The hometown of a Palestinian who stabbed and murdered two Israelis in Jerusalem is naming a street in his honor.
The municipality of Surda-Abu Qash in the northern West Bank announced it will name a street for Muhannad Halabi, Palestinian Media Watch reported, citing an article by Donia Al-Watan, a Palestinian news agency.
Halabi, a 19-year-old law student, was shot dead on Oct. 3 after stabbing Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Bennett, and injuring Bennett’s wife Adele and their 2-year-old son in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. The street naming was just one of several honors, including an honorary law degree from the Palestinian Authority Bar Association, posthumously awarded to Halabi.
“This is the least we can do for Martyr Halabi,” Surda-Abu Qash Mayor Muhammad Hussein said, according to PMW, adding that Halabi “is a pride and badge of honor for the whole village.”
A Palestinian family in Gaza honored Halabi by naming their newborn son for him, and in a related incident, a newborn in Gaza has been named “Knife of Jerusalem,” according to PMW, in an apparent salute to Palestinian stabbing attacks on Jewish victims. The media watch website cited an Oct. 23 post on the official Fatah Facebook page. Fatah is the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
-
News ‘Whose seat is now empty’: Remembering Hersh Goldberg-Polin at his family’s Passover retreat
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Fast Forward In the ashes of the governor’s mansion, clues to a mystery about Josh Shapiro’s Passover Seder
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.