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| Melkite Catholic Archbishop Elias M. Chacour of Galilee spoke at Oblate School of Theology May 1-2 as part of the “Building Bridges” Catholic conference on peace in the Holy Land.
J. Michael Parker | Today's Catholic |
By J. Michael Parker
For Today’s Catholic
SAN ANTONIO • Palestinians and Jews need common friends, the Melkite Catholic archbishop of Galilee told 150 people in a May 1 lecture at Oblate School of Theology’s Immaculate Conception Chapel.
Archbishop Elias M. Chacour has become a worldwide advocate for the 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs living in Israel, including 147,000 Christians. His evening lecture prefaced a day-long event at the school titled “Building Bridges: A Catholic Conference on Peace in the Holy Land.”
He said 75 percent of Palestinian Christians live in refugee camps or in exile. “We have tens if not hundreds of thousands of refugees living in subhuman conditions waiting to return,” the prelate said.
Before the 1948 birth of the State of Israel, Archbishop Chacour said Arabs and Jews lived together peacefully on the land for centuries. But in 1949 Israeli soldiers marched into his village of Biram in upper Galilee and told residents they would have to move temporarily. When they returned, their homes had been bulldozed and they have never been allowed to return. In all, he said, 460 villages were obliterated to make space for Jewish settlement.
In the archbishop’s words, Palestinians have been paying the bill for the injustices committed against his Jewish brothers and sisters during World War II.
The land had been under a British mandate since the end of World War I and had been called Palestine. It is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, but after the war, it was promised to Zionists as a permanent homeland for Jews.
“Palestinians were thrown into a diaspora. The Western world wanted to repair the evil that was done to the Jews, provided that some third party would pay the bill for the guilty,” he said.
“We (Palestinians) have been declared a terrorist nation. Today, people are waking up and realizing that we are more terrorized than terrorist. A huge ethnic cleansing has happened in Palestine. Many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been thrown into neighboring Arab countries, creating a huge refugee problem that’s waiting for a solution,” Archbishop Chacour said.
He asked his audience to view him not as an archbishop or a priest but simply as a human being in such a complicated situation that “looking at who I am from the outside is a lost cause.”
Looking behind superficiality, he said, “I am your forgotten, ignored brother who has been labeled as something totally different from reality.”
“I am proud to be a Palestinian. I have no bombs and I’m not a terrorist, yet I am penalized like the Jews, who were labeled as ‘dirty.’”
“‘Dirty Jews’ have become ‘dirty Palestinians,’” he said. “How many Third Reichs have we had since the end of Nazism?”
The archbishop said that being a Palestinian Arab Christian complicates the image many Americans have of Palestinians, which is a caricature
In that caricature, Palestinians have to be automatically Muslims; Muslims have to be bloodthirsty and inclined to violence, Archbishop Chacour said.
He said he wasn’t born a Palestinian or a Christian or an Arab.
“I was born a baby, in the image and likeness of God. Jews were also born babies in the image and likeness of God.” Thus, he neither hates Jews nor wants his American supporters to hate them. “I love the Jews; I don’t like what they did to us.”
The archbishop discussed his work in building schools, community centers and other places where Palestinian Christians can learn to live in peace and justice with others. His Mar Elias Educational Institutions, with a total of 4,000 students, don’t discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity. It teaches Christian, Jewish, Muslim in Druze students to invest in a shared future of peace and justice.
He recalled his persistent six-year effort to build a school when Israeli authorities denied him a building permit.
“I decided that I needed a school; the authorities needed a permit.” He began building without waiting to get a permit and was summoned to court.
When a judge threatened to have the school torn down for the violation, the prelate’s response was, “You would be doing me a favor. I would take pictures and show the world what Israel does to those who want to build schools.”
Archbishop Chacour said he finally decided that the road to Jerusalem (to obtain a building permit) leads through Washington, D.C. Without making an appointment, he flew to Washington, D.C., and went to the home of Secretary of State James Baker unannounced and managed to make friends with Baker’s wife, Susan.
Later, she called him and she and her husband prayed with the archbishop by phone. The archbishop facetiously described the incident as “the first time I ever spoke to God on the phone.”
Baker interceded with the Israeli government and the archbishop finally got his permit.
Archbishop Chacour said he is not a beggar for money but is working to change attitudes.
“You have Jewish friends. Even if they’re fanatics and they hate Palestinians, continue providing them with your friendship; but don’t interpret your friendship for them as an automatic antipathy toward the Palestinians.”
In fact, he added that Jews need Americans’ friendship now more than ever, as do Palestinians.
“If taking our side would mean you show understanding for everything we do because we do it, bad as well as good, it will be interpreted that you’re one-sided against the Jews. Please know we don’t need your friendship if it encourages us to hate the Jews.
“Don’t come to be one more enemy. Come to be a common friend.”
The archbishop said Jews and Palestinians don’t need to learn how to live together. They have to remember how they lived together for centuries — “with exemplary respect for each other.”
The way to achieve both peace and security is to pursue both justice and integrity, he said, adding: “Unless we walk hand in hand, we’ll soon hang beside each other. Each says ‘the land belongs to me,’ but it belongs to neither. They have to understand that we both belong to the land, with peace and justice for both Jews and Palestinians; otherwise, both will go to a place the Lord forbids.”