Phil Haslanger: Amid conflict, Christian Israelis chart a different way
Two leaders with local connections coming to talk about peace efforts
Often lost in the stories of rockets and shootings and tears and funerals in Israel and Palestine are some of the long-term and very local efforts to create a different kind of future in the hotly contested land that is holy ground for three major faith traditions.
One of those efforts is occurring in northern Israel not far from the tense border with Lebanon. Another is happening in the city of Bethlehem, just outside Jerusalem, just across the forbidding separation barrier that divides Israel from the Palestinian West Bank. They both grow out of Christian communities, which are a distinct minority in a land where synagogues and mosques help define the territory.
The architects and inspirations of both of those efforts will be in Madison in the next two weeks, reflecting their close association with people here and offering area residents a unique window into the potential for a different way of living in the midst of conflict.
The Rev. Mitri Raheb, a native of Bethlehem, has been pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church there since 1988. He will be speaking Friday morning at the annual assembly of the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Archbishop Elias Chacour established a network of educational institutions in northern Israel that have crossed boundaries of religion and ethnicity. In 2006, he became the archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church in northern Israel. He will give a public talk at First United Methodist Church, 203 Wisconsin Ave., at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 14.
While Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday this month, these two know in very personal terms the other side of the story -- the Arabs who were displaced by the creation of Israel, the suffering their families and friends have undergone in the years since, the conflicts between Arabs and Jews in Israel proper, and the crushing weight of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Yet neither Chacour nor Raheb has given in to the bitterness or despair that marks so much of the landscape. Instead, drawing on their own religious beliefs, prodigious energy and skill at organizing and negotiating, they have created amazing alternative institutions.
In Bethlehem, Raheb built on the Lutheran tradition of providing social services to those in need and began building a place where Palestinians could prepare for a different and better future than what they know now. In 1995, he founded the International Center of Bethlehem as a place where Palestinians could immerse themselves in arts and culture and social activities. He brought people from around the world to Bethlehem and in turn added a media center to help the people of Palestine tell their own story.
Over time, he added an elementary school, a health center and, most recently, a college-level academy. The International Center of Bethlehem is now the third largest private employer in Bethlehem. "We need to build Palestine from scratch, stone by stone and brick by brick," he explained at a conference in Bethlehem in November of 2005.
That's what Chacour has been doing in the northern town of Ibillin as well.
Starting with a kindergarten in 1970, the Mar Elias Educational Institutions are now a consortium of six schools from kindergarten through college, including a teacher training center and a school for gifted children. The students and faculty at this institution cross the divides of the land, coming from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Druze traditions. There are now more than 3,000 students in the six schools.
"This is the best tool -- to build peace and justice around the school desk," Chacour said as we sat around his table late one night in November of 2005.
His schools teach more than academic subjects. At the heart of the curriculum is teaching "of the young in the ways of peace, reconciliation, respect, and justice," as his Web site says.
The American group that has worked to support Chacour's work is called the Pilgrims of Ibillin. Its development director, the Rev. Joan Deming, lives in Madison, providing a close link to this city. Others from Madison have been to Ibillin to visit and to work.
Raheb also has close ties to Madison. Lutheran Bishop Bruce Burnside brought back from the Bethlehem church's art center a beautiful Christmas tapestry that now hangs at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Monona. Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg (where I serve as associate pastor) is a partner church with the Bethlehem congregation as is the broader association of UCC churches in southwestern Wisconsin.
Both of these religious leaders can offer a detailed political analysis of what has been happening in their land, but neither is content to simply explain or complain. They are seeking ways to step past all the frustrations of the present moment to offer a glimpse of what can be. In the next few weeks, Madison area residents will get a chance to share in their vision.
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Reports on speeches by Mitri Raheb and Elias Chacour will be on Phil's blog, Faith & Values.
Phil Haslanger is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and a former managing editor of the Cap Times.
