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 highly recommend this because it’s easy to read, but powerful throughout.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. This was another book that was an encouragement to me as I continue my studies in Peace Studies, which is a scholarly field, but more importantly it needs to be a field of practitioners. And it continues to be a discouragement as many Christians continue to be ignorant or biased in their perceptions of that conflict today.
One of the most discouraging things about this book was the way in which many Christians and Christian organizations were complicit in the injustices of 1947 and since. I think this is a must read for most Christians who have no knowledge of the Israeli-Palesstinian situation or who approach that situation through biases and prejudice – whether informed by theological biases or otherwise. The role of his parents in his faith and development of a commitment to peacemaking was powerful as well. One of the things that struck me as powerful was God’s sovereign hand on this one individual through such devestating circumstances. As the book goes on and as Chacour describes his development and further education, he describes the broader global history involved in the events of 1947 including the role of the west and of western Christians with various theological persuasions. He tells the the story of what happened to the Palestinian villages and peoples in the ensuing years and systematic oppression and injustices involved. Chacour begins the novel recounting life in his village before the 1947 events that created the modern nation state of Israel. This is a novel, an autobiography, through which the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is told. Father Chacour was a Nobel Peace Price Nominee and the book captures some of what contributed to that. Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour has become a classic in the realm of peace studies and in the discussion on Israel and Palestine. I was recommended this book this past summer by a friend and just finished it.
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