Thread dedicated for Hilarion Capucci, the Archbishop of the Arabs.
Capucci dedicated his life to defending Palestinian rights but was politically active across the Middle East. Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, #Syria and Kuwait issued postage stamps in his honor.

Bishop Cappuci was born on March 2, 1922 in the city of Aleppo, named George. He lost his father at the age of five, and then he joined the school at the age of eight in Lebanon and completed basic education, then he moved to Palestine to study in the Monastery of Saint Anne in

Jerusalem. During the years he spent in Jerusalem, he witnessed numerous violations of the rights of Palestinian people, including the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1964, which he witnessed by himself and this left a huge impact in his life.

Then, he returned to Lebanon and chose for himself the name hilarion, named after the hermit who lived in Gaza Strip before 1800 years, which explains the spiritual link he had to Palestine. He was elected as the bishop of Jerusalem deputy in the Greek Catholic Church in 1965

& he moved to live in Jerusalem, taking advantage of his position in favor of the Palestinian cause.
June 5, 1967 was a turning point in his life, when Israel attacked Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

He was pro panArabism. He witnessed what the Israeli occupation forces did against Palestinians, and saw how the dead bodies filled the streets, of which 400 bodies was buried by Cappucci himself & he prayed on the Palestinian martyrs together with the Muslim senate.

The bishop urged resistance. He even wrote in his memoir that 3 days after the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, an Israeli soldier spit on him so he hit him back with a stick & said 'Now I got convinced that those INVADERS does not understand except the language of the whip, to

break their violence & savagery.
He lived rejecting any cooperation with Israel & boycotted the protocol events with them. He was arrested on August 18,1974 on charges of smuggling weapons for the Palestinian resistance from Lebanon in his diplomatic car & he was sentenced for 12

for 12 years but he was released 3 years & 3 months after his sentence due to the intervention of the Pope Paul VI, pope of the Catholic Church, the pope of the vatican & negotiations with the occupation lasted several months

and was released from the Ramle prison in 1977, but the conditions was for him to be away from #Palestine.
He was in pain for leaving Jerusalem & its people, but completed their struggle, taking advantage of the relationship he had with the Vatican to condemn what the Israeli

army is doing in Palestine, & he wished to return back to Jerusalem until he died. However, he never stopped working for the Palestinian cause & for the Palestinian people.
He participated in the campaigns of lifting the siege that was imposed on Gaza Strip & he participated in

the Freedom Flotilla in 2009 to deliver food aid to Gazza, & was also aboard on Marmara, the Turkish ship, that wanted to break the siege imposed on the Gaza in 2010 & the Israeli army attacked this ship.

He declared his refusal of the Arab Spring & supported the Syrian government & Al-Assad & he was very happy especially after the Syrian flag was raised back in Allepo.He died in January 1, 2017, at the age of 94 years in the Italian capital of Rome, and was buried in Lebanon.