Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre

St Mary’s Cathedral, Picardy Place

Archbishop Elias Chacour comes to the Festival of Spirituality and Peace this coming Friday. At a time when peace in the Middle East is increasingly precarious, it is important to hear what this powerful peacemaker has to tell us.

He is a Palestinian who has experienced the trauma of expulsion from his home village in 1948 when the state of Israel established itself – an experience shared by hundreds of thousands of his fellow-Palestinians. His response has not been one of hostility but of a concern to create a country where Palestinians and Israelis can live at peace with each other.

His challenge to the hatred that poisons relations between the two communities is to insist that ‘hatred is corruption, and we refuse to be corrupted by hatred.’ Speaking as a Palestinian he says to the Israelis, ‘We will not react to what you do to us with the same treatment. We will act genuinely to find a way to liberate ourselves from this humiliation.’ He refuses to intimidate or be intimidated.

He is a voice of hope in a situation which appears to be hopeless. We need his inspiration. Archbishop Chacour should be heard.

http://www.festivalofspirituality.org.uk/34.html