Archbishop Elias Chacour: Blood Brothers and the Schools of Ibillin
Expelled from his Galilee village as a boy in 1948, Elias Chacour became a priest, an educator and an archbishop, and one of the best-known Palestinian Christian advocates of reconciliation.
Few Palestinian Christians are as well known abroad as Elias Chacour. His memoir, his schools and his decades of preaching on reconciliation made him an unusual figure: a Palestinian citizen of Israel who spoke openly about the injustice done to his people, while insisting that Jews and Arabs were, in his phrase, blood brothers.
Biram
Chacour was born in 1939 in Kafr Bir'im, a Christian village in the upper Galilee near the Lebanese border. In 1948 Israeli forces ordered its residents to leave, promising they could return within days. They were never allowed back. Even after Israel's Supreme Court ruled in the villagers' favour, the army demolished the village in 1953. The expulsion of Bir'im became one of the best-known injustices affecting Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a formative experience for Chacour.
The priest of Ibillin
Chacour was ordained a priest in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and in 1965 was sent to the village of Ibillin in the Galilee. There he began building schools, starting with a kindergarten and growing into the Mar Elias Educational Institutions, a network of schools and a college serving Christian, Muslim, Druze and Jewish students. Education, he argued, was the most powerful tool for dignity and coexistence.
Blood Brothers
His memoir, *Blood Brothers* (1984), told the story of Biram, his vocation and his commitment to nonviolence, and was translated into many languages. It introduced a generation of Western Christians to the existence of Palestinian Christians. It also made a case that justice for Palestinians and security for Israelis were not opposites.
Archbishop of Galilee
In 2006 Chacour was elected Melkite Archbishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and all Galilee, serving until 2014. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize and received numerous international awards for his work in education and reconciliation.
Legacy
Chacour's life touches the central themes of the Palestinian Christian experience: dispossession, faith and a refusal to hate. His schools in Ibillin, which bring children of different faiths together in one classroom, may prove to be his most lasting monument.