Two dramatic incidents in Elias Chacour's life provide neat bookends to his efforts to live out a different kind of reality in northern Israel.

One involved inviting Muslims in his small community to use his Melkite Catholic church for worship. The other involved putting his life at risk when Hezbollah threated to "destroy Haifa on the head of the Jews" during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon.

As Israel this month celebrates the 60th anniversary of its creation as a modern nation -- and the Palestinian Arabs in Israel and displaced to surrounding nations lament the destruction of their way of life in the process -- Chacour was in Madison talking Wednesday evening to several hundred people about his work as a leader of Palestinian Christians. The tour was presented by the Pilgrims of Ibillin - a group with ties to Madison.
Chacour now is an archbishop in the Melkite Catholic Church -- the largest group of Christians in Israel. He made his reputation by establishing a network of schools in the northern Israeli town of Ibillin, where from kindergarten through college, he strives to have a faculty of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Druze teach children from all across the region of Galilee who likewise represent a wide mix of cultures and religious traditions.

He was speaking at First United Methodist Church in downtown Madison, the second prominent Palestinian Christian to visit Madison in a month. (For more on the work of Chacour and of Rev. Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem, see my earlier column. To read about Raheb's talk to area Lutherans, click here.)

During his talk, he recalled some of his early years in Ibillin as a young priest serving a community where the divide between Muslims and Christians was fairly wide. Then lightning hit the mosque and Chacour invited the imam - the prayer leader of the mosque -- to use the Melkite Catholic church for worship. The imam could not believe the invitation. "Why not?" Chacour said he ask his Muslim colleague. "We both pray to God, don't we?" The Muslims used the church and Chacour helped them raise money to rebuild the mosque. In the process, he forged a bond that lasts between the Chrisitan and Muslim communities, a bond that has grown stronger with the excellence of the schools he runs for all children.

Chacour told the story of the early days of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah during an earlier reception. As the hostilities grew, he said, Hezbollah told all the Arabs to leave Haifa, a major coastal city in Israel with a large Arab presence. Hezbollah said it would "destroy Hezbollah on the heads of the Jews."

The priest had recently been named an archbishop and had not yet taken up residence in Haifa, but said when he heard this, he left his home in Ibillin and moved into the archbishop's residence, even though it was still being renovated. Then he called the chief rabbi of Haifa and the mayor and told them "I came here to live with you." He was willing to face the possibility of bombing to stand in solidarity with those being threatened.

All this is not to say that Chacour has not had innumerable troubles with the Israeli government over the years as he has built his educational institutions despite a bureaucracy that seems to thwart him at every turn. "You will never convince us to hate you," he said he tells Israeli authorities on behalf of the Christian minority in that nation. "Hatred is corruption and I will not allow my community to hate."

Instead, he said, "I speak out clear and loud for justice for the Palestinians and justice for the Jews and justice for everyone."