GALILEE BISHOP SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE, FRIENDSHIP AND PEACE
By Sonia Nettnin
CounterCurrents.org, India
March 29 2006
Rev. Dr. Abuna Elias Chacour spoke about the need for security and
peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He said people need to take
responsibility for one another by befriending people they consider
their enemies.
Chacour is the founder and president of Mar Elias University, located
in Ibillin, Israel – where Muslims, Christians and Jews interact
at the educational and social levels. On February 25, 2006 Chacour
became the Catholic Bishop of the Galilee.
Chacour spoke at North Park University in Chicago, where hundreds
of people celebrated the tenth anniversary of The Center for Middle
Easter Studies. Here is a condensed summary of what Chacour said to
an audience of Muslims, Christians and Jews.
“It is really a great pleasure to be with you. You should envy me
for what I see. I see a beautiful face. May God bless you and give
you courage to say the truth to the people and flatter the poor. I
will do what I normally do but very short and succinctly.
I have the pride of introducing myself as a Palestinian. I am a proud
Palestinian. I am Palestinian-Arab, which means my mother language
is this very easy to learn Arabic language (audience chuckled). I
challenge you; you will see even our children in kindergarten they
speak very easily (audience chuckled more).
I am also a Christian – that complicates the picture a little bit.
People ask how comes were you born Christian thank God I converted
to Christianity. I am also strongly as convincingly a citizen of the
State of Israel. No way would I hide my social identity. Who am I
first: Israeli citizen? Israel is an entity 58 years-old and I am 66
years-old. Israel immigrated into my country; my people became the
Jews of the Jews. They were scattered into three major groups who
experienced their Diaspora.
The first major group is in neighboring, outside countries – Egypt,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The second major group in the Occupied
Territories (West Bank and Gaza). They did not know they were going
for no return and 58 years later they’re still refugees.
A very striking example is a piece of desert called Gaza. Gaza had
45,000 inhabitants originally but after Al-Nakba (the Palestinian
Catastrophe) the rest (of the people) are Diaspora from 460? towns
and villages and these people in Gaza were left with no freedom and
no rights but they were free to make children who are healthy, clever,
ambitious, but without any future.
Twenty years later after they became refugees Israel controlled all
of Palestine including Gaza Strip and added the provision of daily
humiliation. It’s not hard to convince young man or young woman to
end their own lives. We have this horrible phenomenon of suicide
bomber. Let us be clear: Islam does not order these crimes against
society. But we are naïve if we condemn suicide bombers and think we
have done our job; destroying homes, killing people, imprisoning people
(are contributing factors to the conflict).
It is our job to regenerate the hope in the hearts of our young people.
The only thing to do is to end the occupation so that Israel can live
peacefully side by side with Occupied Territories that were destined
to become Palestine.
I was born a baby with a birth certificate. I was converted to
Christianity not long ago. He is our major problem: we don’t know what
to do without Him; we don’t know what to do with Him. It is confusing.
Two-thousand years ago that I was converted to Christianity and my
forefathers preached humanity built on two realities. They started
saying to humanity there should be no privilege of Jew against
Palestinian, man against woman (equality).
I’m living in this Holy Land with the complexity of my identity and
what is wrong between Jews and Palestinians and why are we fighting for
almost a century. There has been no war of religion between Judaism and
Islam. It is not an ethnic conflict. During a speaking engagement with
Golda Meir I told her I’m more Semite than you. She was born in Russia
and she grew up in Milwaukee, but I speak Hebrew with an Abram accent.
It’s a territorial conflict – land of Israel, land of Palestine.
Palestinian want justice what did we got we got misery only misery
only starvation only poverty we did not got justice.
We made a divorce between peace and justice and we need to remarry
them – that’s what we are missing. Religion is playing major role
to justify a political, national existence in the Holy Land – not
religion as such – but the selective reading of our Scriptures. Each
one tries to find justification for his political philosophy and
that’s why I wrote second book, ‘We Belong to the Land.’ The (Mar
Elias) school we try to create role model to see if we can change
the mentality in education of children to respect no matter who is
in front of you…changing the policy of tolerance.
I am a tolerated person in Israel but I never tolerated any Jew.
Tolerance bears in itself the seeds of brutality and persecution. We
are trying to educate our children to go beyond tolerance to a welcome
acceptance of the other. We are testing whether we can create unity
within the existing diversity. Instead of considering Palestinian
or Christian or Muslim or Jew as contradicting we are trying to make
that a real challenge.
It’s not a matter of denying or solidarity it’s a matter of
education. How we portray non-Jew to the Jew and the Jew to the
Palestinian. People see in the other the potential enemy or danger.
This is where the solution has to be looked for. I have few experiences
these past, few months.
Last August a Jewish soldier riding on a bus from Haifa to the
city of Shfaram took his machine gun and killed the driver, two
Muslim sisters (and another person). Twelve others were injured. The
soldier was killed and the police were unable to liberate (retrieve)
his body. The minister of police was sitting on the roof of a house
while tens of thousands of people around the bus.
‘This is a political man,’ the chief of police said to me. ‘If you
can help us.’
‘I can go,’ I said.
I said to the people: ‘I want to see the body of the soldier,’ and
making my way between the young people enraged, nervous, I reached
the bus.
‘Abuna the brain of the driver is still in a plastic sack on the
left-hand side of the bus,’ a man said to me.
I walked in the blood.
Where was the Jewish blood and where was the Palestinian blood. I
could not see who was Jewish or Palestinian who was the same color,
who was the same smell the same horror. I walked in the blood;
I walked in the blood of my brothers, the Palestinians and the Jews.
We are Christians, Muslims and Jews. We are enraged and we have
the right to be shocked we are shocked. We are instructed from our
religions whenever our enemy falls in front of us the only thing we
have to do is respect him and bury him with respect. Soldier of an
unpardonable crime. Our duty is to let him go.
It was 90 minutes before I could convince the crowd to let the chief
of police and his men retrieve the body. I told the soldiers: ‘The
time you are here no one is secure go away and security will come
back to the town.’ Nine soldiers were there with their machine guns.
I stood between me and the people. (Reader’s note: Chacour said he
stood between the people…the people).
I told the soldier: ‘you better take away of your machine guns and
go away with peace.’ The chief of police told the soldiers: ‘did you
hear what he said the priest? He said go away.’
The men walked away. I said to the people: ‘Go home silently. Respect
our people who were dead. Come back tomorrow we’ll organize a huge
march against bloodshed against terrorism.’
Fifty-thousand people there were many Jews, I must confess the next
day. Eight days later we celebrated. We wanted to celebrate our
martyrs our two Christians, a way to celebrate to remember two Muslim
sisters. Pray to God to give them eternal rest. Full of Christians,
Muslims and Jews praying for their own martyrs in the church. It was
the sweet from the bittersweet of the martyrdom.
We never read in Israel about a Zion. We don’t want to read about Zion
(then, to the best of my knowledge, Chacour referred to the following
Biblical passage)
“Even the ox has knowledge of its owner, and the ass of the place where
its master puts its food: but Israel has no knowledge, my people give
no thought to me.” Isaiah 1:3
The land does not belong to you it belongs to God. These passages
have to be read in the context of the Bible. The Bible has to be read
it is the struggle between God and humanity. That is why I think we
need to go back to the original interpretation of the Bible.
The first, two questions that God asks humanity: ‘Where are you?’ He
was hiding because he did something bad. ‘Where is your brother?’
Crime worse than am I my brother’s custodian you are coming to ask
me? (Here is the passage I believe Chacour referred to)
“And the LORD said unto Cain, Where [is] Abel thy brother? And he said,
I know not: [Am] I my brother’s keeper?” Genesis 4:9
As a Christian this question (where is your brother?) has changed
dramatically. I am my brother’s custodian. I am responsible for my
brothers. Jews in the concentrations and Palestinian refugees. I’m
responsible what happened to my Jewish brothers and sisters in the
concentration, but in no way am I guilty. To be responsible means
to be ready to ally for one common front so that no way no such
holocaust horrors happened anywhere against anyone anybody anytime
– a common front so that no more holocausts against human beings
(audience clapped loudly).
The Armenian is a Holocaust (Armenian Holocaust) – the genocide in
Cambodia. I was in Cambodia ten years ago I saw mass graves. These
people were not buried. They were buried alive. What happened in
Rwanda. When will we have what happened time and time against the
Palestinians.
In the Talmud it says when you save one human life it is as if you
save the whole human world. When you kill one human life it is as if
you kill the whole human world.
We use religions in order to justify our own selfishness, ambition,
political objectives.
Why did I tell you all of these stories in a rapid way because I
believe you can make a difference you can make a big difference. I
come to beg. I want a favor from you. I’m not begging for money. I
am here to beg you for something much more difficult. I am inviting
you to change your mind if your need is there.
On behalf of Palestinian children I beg you to give your friendship
to Jews but if you take the side of the Jews and you empathize with
the Jews but if it is in enmity against me you are wrong. It should
mean to speak to the heart of your friend so that he accepts his
enemy as a potential friend.
When you visit Palestinians if they do not have they will borrow
money to give you what you need to feel comfortable (Palestinians
are generous and hospitable people).
But if the side of the Palestinians would mean for you that you will
justify the violence all our people commit; if taking our side to
encourage us to go ahead with our hatred then we do not need your
friendship. You are reducing yourself to being one more enemy. We do
not need you to come to us to reduce us to pieces.
We are struggling to find a way out of this nightmare of killing
each other.
Jews and Palestinians never risk to live alone or die alone. We are
condemned to walk side by side or to hang by each other. We were
never enemies with the Jews until 1948. I am all for the Jews to have
freedom of expression, home and homeland. I am ready to struggle with
the Jews because they are human beings. But when my people cannot
live, how can I agree when my people are homeless, the scattered,
the dispersed, how can I agree? There should be another solution so
that there is justice, peace and security.
This is your responsibility as human beings unless you want to be
like the sheet of paper that came out of the factory, immaculate like
white snow on the table by itself, but the pens and pencils around
the paper did not approach…clean white empty forever. What kind
of hand do you want: clean and empty hands or hands loaded with dirt
because you worked in order to save the poor and the impoverished?”
*** Directors Claude Roshem-Smith and Andre Chapel made a documentary
about Chacour. Here is a link to a review of the film: Elias Chacour:
Prophet in His Own Country.
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