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4/25/04

A remarkable man came to Spokane in April this year.

The experience was a beautiful gift for one as jaded and cynical as I have become, so deeply pained at recent events in my own life and suffering a profound existential angst about the human condition. He just might renew my faith in the humanity of Humanity, for he has suffered much and is still suffused with love. He spoke at the First Presbyterian Church, which has a support group for his work called the Stones of Ibillin.

Father (Abuna) Elias Chacour is the founder of the Mar Elias Educational Institution in the Arab village of Ibillin (EE-B EE-LEEN) in the Galilee in Green Line Israel (pre-1967 borders). He was presented in Spokane by the Stones of Ibillin, a national church-based support group for Father Chacour's work with Palestinian children in Israel. His web site (www.m-e-c.org/who/abuna.html) tells us that he became a young priest in the early 1960's. He has beome an ambassador for non-violence, traveling often around the glove. He has received many international Peace Awards, and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions.

We learn at his web-site: "Elias Chacour was born November 29, 1939 in the village of Biram in Upper Galilee in Arab Palestine to a Palestinian Christian family... At the age of eight years, he experienced the tragedy of his people.  He was evicted, along with his whole village, by the Israeli authorities and became a deportee and a refugee in his own country, the Palestine of his birth. Because he remained in the country of his forefathers, he was granted citizenship of Israel when the state of Israel was created in 1948." His life was hard: at 12 years of age, he was sent by his parents to an orphanage for the sole purpose of obtaining an education. He is a fairly small man, unimposing, with a 6-inch long white chin beard, and greying hair.

The following is my best recollection of his talk, during which I took notes. It is not necessarily in the order in which he presented the subjects.

We Are Responsible!
He began his talk with very Christian statements and references to "the man from Galilee" that reminded me that there are many in this world with approaches and beliefs very different from mine. Over the years I have come to a new appreciation of parts of Christianity, after experience had driven me very far from it. I was afraid he was going to move into a sort of new-age-y "love everyone and everything will be all right and can't we all just get along". But he did not. Quite the opposite. While he called upon all of us to recognize the humanity and "brotherhood" (sorry women - figure of speech - I don't like it either, but there we are . . . ) of all on earth, and called upon us to love one another, regardless the wounds, regardless the crimes. He also made it very, very clear that an essential part of loving one another is calling one another to account. He said that we are indeed our brother's keeper, and we must love one another, and we must address wrongs directly, when and as they happen, and we must work to right those wrongs. He said, using first person but meaning all of us, "I am responsible for the deaths of the Holocausts. I am not guilty of them, but I am responsible, and I must do all I can to ensure they do not happen again". He named some Holocausts: Armenia, World War II against Jews and Gypsies, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Palestine. He named those specifically.

This man has, and communicates, a deep and abiding love for humanity, and a deep and abiding sense of responsibility and accountability. He describes himself as "a troublesome man, who loves to awaken the conscience of quiet people." He spoke about the Beatitudes, giving them a very different interpretation from the standard one: he said "How can I go into a concentration camp and say to the Jewish children 'Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.'? He asks how can he say that to a child in Gaza? He would be run off, he tells us, with cries that he was cursed. He feels Jesus meant that if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice, then you must go do it. You must seek it yourself, you must act upon what you know is right, in order to obtain justice.

Early in his talk he gave a loving and lively description of "the land", the fields worked by hand and tended by family for centuries, fields cleared and trees planted with sweat and love, and the excruciating pain of seeing bulldozers tear them out, for punishment, for settlements. He recounted how a long time ago Coretta Scott King was invited by Israel to plant a "Peace Forest" (knowing that the "Forests/Trees for Israel campaigns" were the deliberate implementation of policy which sought to erase the Arab villages that had been destroyed in 1948 and 1967 to make way for settlements, I held my breath). The trees she would "plant" for this forest were 500 trees from the Arab village of Qatama in what is now northwest Jerusalem that were to uprooted by fiat by the Israeli government, with, as is routine, no consultation with the owners of the trees, and replanted in in a Jewish section of Jerusalem. The people of Qatama wrote to her and begged her not do do this, for this was their livelihood, and told her that (as was and is routine) they were not being compensated, that the trees were simply being taken from them. She didn't respond, but came to Israel for the ceremony, and the trees were replanted in Jerusalem. A delegation of villagers came from Qatama to hang black wreathes and signs that read "take me home to Qatama" on the trees, and to petition the Knesset and the people of Jerusalem to allow them to return the trees to Qatama. The answer was no. Father Chacour was able to find someone who gave money to replace the 500 with smaller trees for the village, but when they were planted in Qatama the nearby settlers got angry and stopped the replanting. The villagers were able to get legal intervention that allowed them to keep just 150 of them, but when they next went to water them, they were all gone. Settlers had removed them, and there was no further recourse.

He spoke of the Wall, now being built to surround the entire West Bank and which slices Bethlehem and many other towns, and sometimes separates a family from their crops or their business. He told how if your home is on one side and your means of livelihood is on the other, you no longer have a means of livelihood, for you cannot get there, and there is no recourse.

He spoke of Jewish fear, and of Palestinian suffering, and pulled no punches either way. He acknowledged the desperation of a people now fighting an army with the only weapon they have - their bodies. He denounced the action, but exhorted us to understand that it happens when there is no hope left and reminded us again that we must love those who have taken that path as much as those who are shooting the guns and driving the bulldozers. And that we must call all to account.

Organizing for Children
On another note, an example of his organizing in his village, a story: The children in Ibillin and surrounding villages had nothing to do in the summertime - no school, no playgrounds, etc. even though nearly 50% of the population was under 14 years of age. He wanted to put together a summer camp for the children and asked the assistance of the mayor (of one of the bigger villages, I believe), who declined. Fr. Elias told him "then we will make your life a hell until you help.", and the next night brought two bus loads of children - with drums. All night they walked around the Mayor's house to the varied beat of their many drums. After three nights, the Mayor asked what he could do to help develop the camp. They now have a very nice camp for the children in the summer.

Another time he saw that the children of Ibillin needed a High School, for there was none there. He went to his Bishop for assistance and blessing, but the Bishop said "Why do you want to put a jewel in the garbage that is this village?" Fr. Chacour told him that rather "the village is a necklace that needs one more stone", and he began to organize to build it. The police came, of course, to stop the building (my own note: the norm even for Arab citizens of Israel is that it is extremely difficult to obtain permits to build anything, and nearly impossible in the West Bank and Gaza, even a well), so Fr. Chacour took the matter to court and asked the judge to allow him enough time to raise the necessary money to complete the school.

As to money: he contacted the Princess (now Queen) of Holland to tell her that he needed the money and that Holland "owed" it to them. She asked how that was and he reminded her that some time before, when dikes broke in part of Holland and people were displaced and impoverished by the damage, the people in his villages raised 200 shekels - about $400, a small fortune for the people in Ibillin - for the poor Dutch people who needed it. She immediately endowed the school, which continues to this day.

As to the court: the judge told Fr. Chacour that he would give him a 6-month stay, and that he must return to the court in 6 months on such and such a day, a Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Fr. Chacour said that was not enough time, and that he could not in any case appear in court on a Sunday morning, for his religion and his duties required that he be in Church at that time. The judge nonetheless said "Sunday, 10 a.m." As the date neared, Fr. Elias wrote to the judge and told him that he could not appear in court on that date, a Sunday, for the reasons already given. The judge set another date six months hence, on a Sunday, at 10 a.m. Six months later, Fr. Chacour again notified the judge that he could not appear and the judge set yet another date - six months from now, on Sunday, 10 a.m. This continued through 36 months, until Fr. Chacour wrote to the judge to tell him he could appear on a Monday. The judge said "Monday, 10 a.m." and by then the school was built and the judge gave the building his legal "blessing".

A refreshing story in the middle of the awfulness of the everyday occurrences. But my strongest memory of his talk was his insistence first that we love one another and then that we hold one another accountable, require action. And that we cannot just admire justice, but must work for it. He ended with the homily "If you want peace, you must work for justice."

That's my best recollection of what I heard from this remarkable man.

Marianne Torres

mtorres@icehouse.net

in solidarity
Marianne
Spokane

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