A Voice Of Peace

Elias Chacour, Christian-Palestinian-Israeli ambassador for peace, addresses a church leaders' luncheon at EMU.
Photo by Jim Bishop

By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record

Upon taking the podium at Monday’s weekly meeting of the Harrisonburg Rotary Club, Elias Chacour did his comical best to calm his audience.

"I’m Palestinian," said Chacour. "And I have no bombs."

In a spirited speech at Spotswood Country Club, Chacour, Melkite archbishop of Galilee, sought to defuse doubt and melt American bias toward people and events in the Middle East: in the latter case, a historical rift between Arabs and Jews.

Chacour, 67, who grew up a Christian, urged listeners to withhold judgment of Israelis and Palestinians. Violence in the Middle East, said Chacour, stems not from religion or racism, but from two nations’ ancient claim to the same land: Palestine.

Chacour, who said he survived "nine wars" between Israelis and Palestinians, said that past wrongs done to his country in no way justify retaliation against Israel. The two peoples, said Chacour, share biblical ancestry.

"Don’t we all pride ourselves to be children of Abraham?" said Chacour, referring to one of the Bible’s key figures in the Old Testament. "How many more people do we kill using religious arguments?"

Get 'Your Hands Dirty'

Chacour challenged Americans to work for justice and peace in the Middle East by getting "your hands dirty"; that is, he said, by adopting more balanced attitudes toward Israelis and Palestinians.

"I’m asking you to never generalize about us," said Chacour. "Every time you take the side of one of the peoples here [in the Middle East], you become just one more enemy to the other."

Changing the future, added Chacour, requires the help of a higher power.

"I think it’s God who converts the hearts," he said. "We need to give hope back to a younger generation that has been deprived of hope. We have to give them hope to help them have a future."

Pete Hardesty, area director for Young Life of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, called Chacour a "man of peace," on a mission to end hatred between Israel and Palestine.

"I saw God’s heart for reconciliation," said Hardesty, who toured Israel this past summer during that country’s skirmish with Lebanon. "He is a man of calling."

Vanessa Cisneros, 20, a junior at James Madison University, also left uplifted.

"He [Chacour] spoke ‘peace,’" said Cisneros, a Spanish and intercultural communications major from Herndon. "I think what he said gave me a new perspective."

Chacour’s church is an Eastern Byzantine Rite church in communion with Rome.

Chacour is scheduled to speak tonight at 7 at the James Madison University Health and Human Services building, room 2301, and twice Wednesday at Eastern Mennonite University: at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. at Lehman Auditorium.

— article by: Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record; posted October 24, 2006