New York Metropolis, United States – A metallic blur streaked previous Khader Khalilia’s ear. The bullet, so shut he may hear it, smashed right into a portray of Romeo and Juliet on the wall behind him.
As extra photographs rang out, Khalilia and his household fell to the ground of their home in Beit Jala, simply outdoors Bethlehem within the occupied West Financial institution. Khalilia draped his physique over his youthful brother Elios to protect him. They have been caught within the crossfire between the Israeli army and a Palestinian resistance group.
“I used to be cursing, praying on the similar time,” mentioned Khalilia, recalling that afternoon in 2003, when he was 23 and nonetheless a school scholar. “Then I mentioned to myself, if we ever survive, I’ll go and serve you, Lord.”
It was a vow he would comply with by means of with. Final yr, pastor Khalilia marked one decade main Redeemer-St John’s Lutheran Church in Dyker Heights, a neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York.
However over the past 9 months, Israel’s war on Gaza has thrown into reduction Khalilia’s id as a Palestinian pastor. He is among the few Palestinian religion leaders in New York Metropolis — and so far as he is aware of, the one one to guide a Christian church.
That visibility has demanded Khalilia develop into an envoy of kinds, dispelling misconceptions and educating New Yorkers about what it means to be Palestinian.
A number of the individuals he meets view his very id — as a Palestinian Christian — to be a contradiction: They suppose all Palestinians are Muslim.
“Once I inform them I am a Palestinian American, Christian Lutheran pastor, they get so confused. However truly, it is not complicated,” Khalilia mentioned.
An inherent a part of his life and job is dislodging hurtful concepts about Palestinian individuals, an Arab ethnic group that spans a number of religions, together with Christianity, Islam and the Druze religion.
Khalilia is typically requested, “When did you exchange to Christianity?” His reply is similar each time.
“I at all times inform them, ‘On the day of Pentecost, 2,000 years in the past.’ Two thousand years in the past, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Palestine.” Christianity, as he factors out, has its roots in his homeland.