My Weekend with ICAHD UK

The weekend at the Greenbelt Festival at the end of August was very special and one of a couple of firsts for me.

A first to be volunteering with ICAHD UK at a key profile-raising event, and a first to stay all weekend at Greenbelt, camping in the very muddy conditions that were quite a feature of this year’s festival. It was great fun with fabulous people! I caught up with several folks that I had not seen for years, heard terrific speakers addressing critical issues, went to some good gigs and danced into the early hours on Friday and Saturday night with a friend who lives at the opposite end of the country to me.

As I look back on this time, I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to be there with ICAHD UK and their very special team. Of all the above experiences, ICAHD stood out as the highlight and my core reason for going. As I reflect on the weekend, I find that being at Greenbelt has impacted me on many levels.

What drew me to ICAHD

I have not been on one of its study tours to Palestine, but one day I very much hope that I can do so. My introduction to the region happened in the 1980s when I was a teenager. I went to Jerusalem and Bethlehem on a school trip with the Blue Coat School in Coventry. Led by a chaplain from Coventry Cathedral, we visited some of the key Biblical sites. It was 20 years since the Six-Day War and people were still talking about it.

Moving forward nearly 40 years, having worked since the late 1990s in the UK and international development field, I encountered ICAHD when I attended a presentation put on by the West Surrey Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Jeff Halper, here from Jerusalem, was speaking. Who’s this Jeff Halper, I had no idea. Due to my hearing impairment, I was sat on the front row at Guildford United Reform Church and then this bald American-born bloke with a white beard like Santa Claus came and sat next to me. We had a very special conversation. When he spoke about his new book focused on decolonising Israel for the Palestinian people something really struck a chord. It was the PowerPoint slide with the bulldozers demolishing the homes of Palestinian people who have lived on their farmland for generations that also hit me. These are the same companies that were sending bulldozers over to West Papua to extract large portions of forest in the third largest rainforest in the world - effectively our lungs to stop the destruction caused by climate change. I chair a charity that works in West Papua, so this is the connection that has drawn me to ICAHD. We share the mutual plight of challenging global injustice which is ultimately about colonial powers drawing lines on a map.

What impressed me during my weekend volunteering on the stall

Moving forward almost two years, the opportunity to be a part of the ICAHD team at Greenbelt arose. It proved to be a brilliant opportunity to learn more about ICAHD and get to know Linda, its director, Malcolm, its administrator, and its wonderful team of volunteers. It is a mighty tiny organisation pushing way above their weight with practically no overheads.

What I witnessed during my weekend of volunteering was the sheer number of enthusiastic people who would stop by the stall and with great enthusiasm seek out Linda and she would give them the biggest hug and remember when they were together in Palestine on the study tours that she leads. I heard people speak about when they visited the region on an ICAHD tour, and for some, they went with other organisations who then joined in with ICAHD for a day. It was during their ICAHD encounter that the realities - the politics harming the entire region, the gross injustice, the ethnic cleansing, apartheid, detention and tragically the genocide of the Palestinian people along with their plight for survival against the oppression afflicted by government policy, the Israeli army and now the settlers - became imprinted on them in a life-changing way so they can no longer remain silent.

Of these people who has gone on to develop her activism is the Reverend Sue Parfitt, now the UK’s most arrested priest because of her civil disobedience concerning climate change and Palestine. She is labelled a terrorist because she opposes Israel’s genocide and supports Palestine Action. On a very wet Saturday afternoon when it was pelting with rain, Linda and I went along to Sue’s seminar. I found it incredibly poignant as Sue talked about her journey into activism. She challenged each of us not to be passive but to resist the evil that is so prevalent in today’s world. I went away humbled and grateful for the privilege to hear Sue.

The following day Rev Sue came to the ICAHD stall just when I happened to be there. She and Linda go back a long way because Sue participated in one of ICAHD’s camps for internationals when they rebuilt a Palestinian home. Then, a year later Sue returned with Linda on one of the study tours to Palestine that she led. Both were hugely influential and resulted in additional visits and Sue’s determined activism for the Palestine cause.

The location of our stall was blessed because we were on the main walkway between the main stage and the numerous other venues in the neighbouring field. For those at Greenbelt who didn’t know ICAHD, we lured them into our stall by offering a small cup of coffee as they walked by. It was such a big draw especially on that very wet Saturday! Almost every conversation involved talking in detail about the genocide and apartheid that is happening in Palestine. Everyone cared about the plight of the Palestinians and not one person challenged what we said.

For us, the challenge is to move this to action and ultimately to see nations across the world act justly and follow through with sentencing. The criminalities have been called out by the International Court of Justice in The Hague who have found the Israeli government guilty of plausible genocide. More than ever, and as a matter of urgency, I believe that we must stop arming Israel.

Alison Glasspool