We must learn to listen and heed the teaching of the prophet Isaiah, "Practice justice and righteousness, and then you will have peace" (227). He laments, "How terribly sad that men could ignore God's plan for peace between divided brothers, even supporting one group as it wielded its might to force out the other" (142). Chacour does not call upon Westerners to reverse history and force Jews out of Palestine, but rather to withhold judgment on who is terrorizing whom when we lack the proximity to make such judgments. Given the almost unqualified support for the state of Israel extended by many American Christians, this story is vitally important for us to hear. So although this story is a brutal one, the undercurrent is hope - hope for a peace made possible by restoring the dignity of every human being. A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he has watched communities transformed by hope and brotherhood. It was the beginning of a decades-long conflict that is still unresolved today.Ĭhacour has devoted his life to working for peace between Arabs and Jews. Unlike their Jewish neighbors, these troops were violent and their aim was conquest. The violence of the war seems to have infected the "peacekeeping" troops, who were funded by a variety of nations with special interest groups. The peace of their community was shattered when Zionist soldiers arrived after WWII, kicking Palestinian residents off of their own land and confiscating their property. Like the rest of the watching world, his family sympathized with the plight of European Jews. Chacour's village was ready to welcome new Jewish settlers fleeing Europe to live among them and farm the land. Chacour's father regularly did business with Jewish villages nearby, treating them as brothers. They understood themselves to have been grafted in to the "olive tree" of Abraham through faith in Jesus. He tells of his peaceful childhood in a Christian village in Galilee where his family had owned and tended the land for generations. It was a fascinating read!Ĭhacour is a Palestinian Christian leader who came of age in the midst of great turmoil in the Middle East. The first book on my list was Elias Chacour's Blood Brothers, which has been recommended to me several times. I'm leading a trip to Israel with Prairie College in 2020, so as part of my preparation I'm trying to get a handle on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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