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Healing old wounds
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG -- Three times he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the Rev. Elias Chacour admits to no such grandiose visions for his life's work. A Palestinian Christian who is bishop-elect for the Melkite Catholic Church in Jerusalem, Chacour insists that he simply wants to devise a balm -- building on the individual relationships of young people -- to heal the seemingly intractable and decades-old conflict between Palestinians and Jews. To that end, he started a school in Galilee, where children who are Palestinian -- Christian and Muslim -- Druze and Jewish would study together and grow to know and respect each other. Bookmarks from the American organization that solicits donations for Chacour's Mar Elias (Prophet Elijah) Educational Institutions offer a synopsis of his dream: "Building peace on the desktops of children. . . ." Last week, Chacour, 63, brought his message to Florida after a trip to Rome, where he had attended a meeting with prominent Jerusalem rabbis and Catholic leaders. About 1,300 people turned out to hear him talk at First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs. In St. Petersburg, he met with representatives of the Roman Catholic diocese and gave talks at First Presbyterian Church and Eckerd College. During an interview at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort, Chacour quickly dispelled any notion that he was a mild-mannered, milquetoast village priest. He expressed strong views, sparing neither the Jewish nor Palestinian peoples nor his fellow Christians in America. "I want to invite all Christians in America, when they go to the Holy Land, Palestine, to go there not only to visit dirt and stones that are quote antiquities or holy places, but to take some time to visit the Christian community, the Palestinian Christian community that is still struggling for survival in Palestine, Israel, the holy land," he said. He also had a message for Americans in general: "What I want them to understand is that the conflict in the holy land is neither a racial conflict nor a religious conflict. It is about the identical claims of two nations on the same territory, and that territory belongs to the Palestinians for thousands of years, and that same territory is claimed by our Jewish brothers and sisters as being theirs also. "Unless we share the land, accept to live together, we shall never find neither peace nor security. And what we expect from Americans is to be more informed. . . . This siding with Jews or Palestinians should not become a one-sided attitude against the other. . . . Is it asking you too much?" He spoke about Jewish suffering during the Holocaust and the aftermath. "What we want them now is to try not to forget, but to deal with their suffering and to do away with this conviction that every non-Jew is a potential enemy. It's not true. It's not true. . . . Remember your suffering in order to avoid reproducing it, through building alliances with other people, not through oppressing other people. "I am very concerned for the well-being and survival of every Jew. . . . And they should understand that unless they take our hands and we take theirs, there will be no redemption for Israel. They cannot continue being a foreign element in the Middle East, surviving with the power of their money and their weapons. The only security for Israel, safety for Israel, is friendship with the Palestinians." To those on both sides of the conflict, he said: "According to the teaching of my compatriot, Jesus Christ -- he was the man from next door to my village -- he never, ever insinuated that violence can give peace or give trust. He never, ever invited my forefathers, the disciples and their followers, to sit by waiting for peace. He rather urged them to go ahead to do something. "Not to build armies, not to build fear, but to build peace. That means you should be ready to sacrifice everything you have and even to sacrifice yourself in order to build peace, but you are never allowed to kill yourself and not also to kill others in the name of God or in the name of some religious values." In his book, Blood Brothers, with its foreword by former Secretary of State James Baker, Chacour's personal suffering as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is made clear. Last week he spoke of his experiences. "We have a large Christian Palestinian community that unfortunately was scattered and became deportees or refugees with other Palestinians soon after the creation of the state of Israel," he said. "A small minority of these Christians was able to stay inside the territory of Palestine. And I'm one of those 134,000 Palestinian Christians still living in the holy land and constantly diminishing in numbers. They're leaving. They are choosing self-exile. They want to live their human life simply, without being harassed with the stereotypes of 'dirty Arab' or the stereotype of being unwanted in their own towns and country." His book tells of his family's eviction from their village by Jewish soldiers. Unable to return to their homes, the villagers sought refuge with other Palestinians in the village of Gish. Blood Brothers recounts how Chacour, a child, discovered the mass grave of two dozen Gish villagers who had been killed by Jewish soldiers. Despite their hardships, Chacour said, his father instilled in his children compassion for Jewish people, particularly survivors of the Holocaust. "And he added that we needed to show them that somewhere on this planet that they are most welcome, because they are our blood brothers," Chacour said, adding that his family and residents of his village welcomed soldiers who were billeted in their homes. "The other side of that welcome is that we became refugees and deportees, and up 'til now we are not allowed to go back in our village that was destroyed on the eve of Christmas 1951 by the Israeli army. But we can go back if we want after we die. . . . That was the fate of my father, my mother, one of my brothers, and despite all of that, or because of all of that, I was educated in this conviction that violence breeds violence. We need to stick to our rights and to remember our rights, but not to become corrupt with methods that were used against us." The youngest of six children, Chacour grew up in the Melkite tradition. Melkites, who are Byzantine rite Catholics of Middle East origin, are descendants of the early Christians of Antioch. Chacour was educated in a Christian boarding school in Haifa and became the first Palestinian to graduate from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ordained after completing studies at the Sorbonne in France, he is fluent in several languages, including Hebrew, French, English, Arabic and Italian. Besides his father, Chacour was influenced by an American-born Melkite bishop, Joseph Raya, who had been a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Raya encouraged Chacour to use the nonviolent protests employed by King. The two organized a six-month camp-in at Chacour's destroyed village of Biram and a peace march in Jerusalem that included Palestinians and Jews. In 1982, Chacour founded his ecumenical school. The Mar Elias Educational Institutions in Galilee is for children from kindergarten to college as well as teachers, and there are plans to establish an accredited university. Older students travel from as far as 200 miles away. Since there are no dormitories, the school rents rooms in the village for some of its students. In the United States, Pilgrims of Ibillin, an organization based in Livermore, Calif., solicits donations for the school, which now has more than 4,000 students. "From the very beginning, we wanted the school to be open for every youngster. And I'm very pleased to say that we succeeded," said Chacour, who is president of the institution. "We want to have many, many more Jews among us. And out of the 290 faculty members, we have 28 Jewish members." Chacour is convinced that his message of peace is being absorbed by his students. He recalled running into a former student, a Druze, who was handcuffed and going before a judge. When asked what was wrong, the student told Chacour: "I graduated from your school, and every day you used to address us for 10 to 15 minutes, saying that God does not kill and that violence breeds only violence and you cannot have peace going to war. So I had to be drafted to the army. I refused, and I was thrown in prison for eight months." The student then told Chacour that he would not change his mind about serving in the military. "Eight months, plus eight months, plus eight, plus eight, 'til I finish my life, I will not carry a weapon," he vowed. Chacour also spoke proudly of his students giving blood to Jewish victims of the continuing violence. "If I can bring one Jew to respect a Palestinian and vice versa, that would be more than enough for me," he said. "So far, I've seen so many, so many Jews and Palestinians come together -- there are hundreds at that school -- to work together, to look for a common future together. This is the most important thing they are going to do."
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