Co-sponsored by Christian Aid, the Methodist Church (UK), the YMCA, and the Church Urban Fund, the festival has gradually morphed over its 37 years into an event that is firmly attached to the religious left.

Rewriting History

Several speakers at Greenbelt sought to challenge Israel's legitimacy by arguing that long-accepted histories of Israel's modern founding and subsequent conflicts with neighboring Arab regimes were manufactured myths.

Ilan Pappe, chair of the Department of History in the University of Exeter and a native of Haifa, Israel, challenged what he called the "official" history of the 1948 and 1967 wars, instead offering a different narrative that he described as more "just."

Haifa native Ilan Pappe is currently a Chair in the Department of History in the University of Exeter and a co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies.

"It is a very distorted picture of history to say Israel launched [a] preemptive attack against gathering Arab armies," Pappe claimed of the 1967 Six-Day War, which he said turned Israel into a "mini-empire." Instead, Israel's political and military elite decided at the end of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence that it had missed an opportunity to control the entirety of the Palestinian mandate, and subsequently began plans for conquest, according to the historian.

"They [Israeli leaders] did not know when the circumstances would allow them to implement that blueprint," Pappe said, but asserted that a series of conferences and actions from 1964-1967 were geared toward extending control over the West Bank. These plans were, in Pappe's words, "part of a determination since 1948 to occupy the West Bank."

"It was still possible to prevent the war [in 1967], but of course there was no interest on the Israeli side to prevent the war," Pappe claimed.

Pappe described as "mythology" the Israeli view of the Six-Day War as a "war of no choice" defending against Arab armies. He also described Israel's earlier War of Independence as "ethnic cleansing" and as a decision to "colonize a homeland that did not belong to them [Israelis] and displace the native, indigenous people."

In addition to his assertion that Israelis conspired to bring about the Six-Day War, Pappe addressed what he called the "de-arabization" of the land, an alleged impulse of Israelis to "get rid" of Palestinians.

The university professor assigned partial blame for the Palestinian displacement on Israel's democratic system, hypothesizing that displacement might not have occurred under other circumstances.

"If Zionism had not emerged out of Eastern and Western Europe, or been led by a more dictatorial regime, more Arabs might have been allowed to stay because democracy would not have been the goal," Pappe said. He explained that Israel's democratic system of governance required it to strive for a clear Jewish majority in its population.

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

During question and answer periods following each Middle East talk at the festival, speakers repeatedly raised the possibility of initiating a boycott against Israel over what they termed its war crimes.

"Israel is perpetuating such a system of injustice that it looks like peace will never be reached unless it is forced onto them," said peace activist Abe Hayeem. Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew born in India and settled in the UK, stated that all Israeli settlements on the West Bank were illegal.

Abe Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew born in India and settled in the United Kingdom, is a founder member of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine.

"Settlements are equal in principle to war crimes," Hayeem said, explaining that the settlements comprised "grave breaches" of international law. Hayeem quoted the head of the International Red Cross delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Rene Kosimic, saying "anyone participating in a war crime is also liable."

Because of this principle, Hayeem suggested that the mayor of Jerusalem should have been arrested for war crimes during a recent visit to London.

Separately, Pappe argued that Israeli society would not change its mind simply because the world at large expressed its ethical, moral, or political disapproval of Israeli policies.

"The only formula that could work is to exert very heavy pressure on the Israeli Jewish society - send them a message that there is a very heavy price to be paid for a society that upholds these kinds of ideologies and pursues these kinds of policies," Pappe said. "Hopefully this kind of pressure, this kind of isolation would trigger a change of opinion inside the Israeli Jewish society."

Pappe contrasted the ethical argument for boycotting Israel with that for boycotting the dictatorial regime in Myanmar. Because a Myanmar boycott would be targeting military rulers, anything affecting the rest of the population would be unethical, in Pappe's view. Israel, in contrast, is "a whole society that supports the regime, that shares its perception."

"You can legitimately and ethically target the whole Israeli population," Pappe concluded. "You have to send them a message - a nonviolent message, if you can."

During the Greenbelt festival, a panel discussion was held on the topic of an Israeli boycott. While the speakers varied in their assessments of what kind of boycott would be appropriate, all five panelists seemed to agree that some sort of isolating action was necessary, either to make settlements economically unfeasible or, more broadly, to collectively punish Israeli society. Concerns centered upon the effectiveness of boycotts or a possible backlash by Israel's citizens.

"Do we have the right to target the majority of Israeli citizens when what we oppose are government policies?" asked panelist Nigel Varndell.

Jane Clements of the Forum on Israel and Palestine questioned an all-encompassing boycott, noting that while it would provide moral support for Palestinians, it might not effect change. A boycott, Clements said, could reinforce the view that Israelis "stand alone" and are always hated and opposed.

Hayeem was the most fervent in his support of a boycott, labeling Israel's leadership an "extreme, almost neo-fascist government."

"[Israel] is a rogue state that is out of control and is supported by the majority of its people," Hayeem argued, advising conference participants to read the "Kairos Palestine" document, a statement authored by some Palestinian Christian leaders that urges a boycott of Israel.

An Incomplete Picture

Throughout the presentations at Greenbelt, Palestinians were cast as indigenous victims facing callous military attacks at the hands of western colonialist aggressors. There was no acknowledgement that many Jews were present in the British mandate of Palestine prior to the Second World War, or that Israel faced regular attacks by groups such as Hamas.

Dr. Swee Ang served with Christian Aid in both Lebanon and Gaza during conflicts with Israel.

In her talk "The Wounds of Gaza," Dr. Swee Ang recalled her work in Lebanon and Gaza as a physician with Christian Aid. As she recounted her work in hospitals, especially during the winter 2008-2009 Israeli incursion into Gaza, Ang showed slides of buildings destroyed and told of bodies incinerated. At no point during her presentation was the Israeli justification for the military operation explained. Hamas's rocket attacks from Gaza upon southern Israel went unmentioned. Ang displayed images of destroyed schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure; however, she did not note that in many cases Hamas fighters had commandeered the facilities as command centers.

Showing a destroyed hospital that had been run by the Palestinian Authority, Ang remarked bitterly: "This is friendship from the Israelis." She lamented that Palestinians "are the ones who are wearing the refugee identity cards, whereas those who robbed them of their homeland call them terrorists."

---Jeff Walton writes on Anglican issues. He writes for the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He is based in Washington DC.