Tag: Adam Shapiro - Page 2 - International Solidarity Movement

Interview with Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the ISM

Kourosh Ziabari | Palestine Think Tank

Adam Shapiro, the symbol of a courageous, pure peace advocate, has long been under fire for his unconditional and categorical criticism of Israeli occupying state.

Born in 1972, the perseverant and steadfast anti-Zionist campaigner and co-founder of International Solidarity Movement vigorously makes efforts to broadcast the voice of subjugated and downtrodden nation of Palestine.

Following his meeting with Yasser Arafat in his Mukataa (government center) in Ramallah while it was besieged during the March 2002 Israeli military operation in the West Bank and Gaza, Adam Shapiro attained an international popularity and was put under the spotlight of Zionist media thereafter.

Despite enduring a stack of insults and invectives from the side of Zionist campaign in the past years, Adam Shapiro neither has relinquished nor alleviated his stance so far; rather intensified his anti-Zionist statements in the particular situations such as the horrendous 22 days of Israeli incursion into Gaza.

This interview has been done in the midst of Israeli genocide in Gaza as it’s apparent in some points of the conversation; nevertheless, it contains some informative and revealing information which are prone to be read and reflected thoughtfully.

Would you please elucidate about the salient and prominent activities which you usually carry out in the International Solidarity Movement? What are your agenda, modus operandi and plans to help the survivors of recent offensive in Gaza?

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) started off in 2001 as an effort to join international solidarity to the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and oppression. This was through the joining of foreign activists with Palestinian activists in civilian-based non-violent active resistance in the west bank and Gaza. this kind of popular resistance has always been part of the Palestinian movement, and we felt that adding the international component would force the world to recognize that the conflict was not about Jew vs. Arab or Jew vs. Muslim, but rather a situation of oppression and discrimination based on ethnicity and religion in a sense similar to the anti-apartheid movement in south Africa.

Nowadays, the ISM role continues in this way, but is also more and more involved with being an eyewitness and reporting on the atrocities of what is happening to the Palestinian people. ISM volunteers spend longer periods of time in the territories and get to know the situation in depth.

Currently ISM has 5 volunteers in the Gaza Strip, who are responding during this assault on the people of Gaza – they are escorting ambulances and medical personnel who are responding to emergency calls; they are documenting what is happening and reporting out to the world, even as the Zionist government bars foreign journalists; they are assisting in the distribution of food and water as they can and to areas that are under major threat; and they are documenting evidence of war crimes, such as the use of white phosphorous artillery shells.

According to what you said, one effective and impressive choice that could help the progressive flow of Palestinians’ extrication and release from the harsh situation is to promote the notion of imposing sanctions, embargo on Israel. How is it possible to boycott and isolate the terrorist regime in the international stage?

There is a call from Palestinian civil society to boycott Israel, and it is for this reason that we are compelled to adhere to this call. That said, sanctions will most likely be symbolic at best, given the penetration of businesses in Israel and the difficulty to render such an impact. Symbolically, however the boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) campaign is very useful, particularly in the west, where it enables us to alter the debate away from spurious charges of anti-Semitism towards pointing out specifically why such measures are necessary. Additionally, the academic and cultural boycott can have tangible results, forcing Israeli academics, artists and intellectuals to confront the reality of their own position and force them to take a stand. There are very credible and valuable efforts in this regard, including a recent determination by a UK-based teachers union. However, in a sense, we need to remember that far more dramatic action is required, given that this situation for the Palestinians has been going on for 60 years, and the scale of the devastation and oppression of the entire Palestinian people is at such a level that symbolic actions – while good – do not meet the urgency of the situation.

Nevertheless, US and its European allies flagrantly veto any anti-Israeli resolution which comes on the top of UNSC agenda and don’t allow the international community to express its unequivocal and clear condemnation of Israeli massacre freely. What’s the reason, in your view, and how can that be opposed?

The reason has to do with domestic factors for the US more than anything else. I think for the European nations it is connected to the lingering guilt over the holocaust, a situation that is exploited by Israel and some of the Jewish organizations in those countries to maintain a code of silence when it comes to clearly calling out Israel for what has been a 60-year effort of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. For the US, there really is no organized constituency willing to vote or donate to politicians campaigns based on this issue. Those who would are small in number and largely ineffective. the pro-Israel lobby in the US is not only among the organized Jewish community, but includes Christian Zionists, the military-industrial complex in the US, the information technology industry, the biotech industry, the medical community and others, all of which have significant relationships with Israel from a business perspective. This all has repercussions in the US political system and set the parameters of the debate in the US around us support for Israel.

That said, I also think the Palestinian leadership has missed opportunities over the years, but most importantly it accepted the framework of peace as a means of addressing the conflict, which helped set up a false sense of parity between the two parties. Instead of maintaining a position of national liberation, or creating a movement based on equal rights or ending oppression/discrimination, the choice for 2 states in the framework of peacemaking has helped allow the us and others to ‘blame both sides’.

All of these inconsistencies aside, neither the American double standards about the Israel’s nuclear case are bearable. They are folding their arms and sitting back relaxed while everybody, even ex-President Carter has confessed that Israel deposits 200 nuclear warheads!

Indeed, on this point in particular the hypocrisy reaches the level of absurd. Add to the points you raise in the question to the fact that Israel has been at war more than any other state in the region and almost always as the initiator and aggressor; not only in the formal wars, but also in the cross-border skirmishes, as occurred with Egypt and Lebanon in the past. If any regime in the region was volatile and prone to use military force it is Israel. A s such, there should be great world concern about its weapons of mass destruction, also since we have seen that Israel is willing to use dubious weapons and disproportionate force such as we witnessed in Lebanon in 2006 (cluster bombs) and Gaza today (white phosphorous artillery).

Accordingly, it seems that the mainstream media are pusillanimously afraid of the Israeli tyrannical lobby which rules the global corporate media. They censor any kind of news reflecting demonstrations, condemnations and anti-Israeli remarks by the world’s statesmen. How can they justify this unilateral and hostile approach in conveying the information?

I think many of the same factors that influence how the US and European governments act also influence the media’s role. But there is also an element of having a media strategy that requires examination. Israel and its allies around the world have a clear, organized and effective media strategy to promote the messaging and images that they want. Sure, there is media bias, but it would be false to think that that bias is the beginning and the end. After all, I know many journalists who cover the conflict and who seek to promote different perspectives in their newspapers and broadcasts. On the Palestinian side, there really is not an effective media strategy, and certainly not one that is organized. Some of these very practical details can make a very big difference in the coverage of the issue. While I don’t think this can fully overcome the bias that does exist, it can start making changes in the overall system.

I also think with the advent of new media, including Al-Jazeera and Press TV in particular, mainstream western media outlets are being challenged and being forced to change. Even the BBC’s own Arabic service has forced a certain change in BBC’s English service, which while subtle, nonetheless has important consequences.

Finally, I think it is also somewhat easy to overcount the media, in that worldwide, the Palestinian position of justice and ending occupation and oppression is the majority opinion, despite the media coverage. It is not world opinion that necessarily needs to change; it is the actions of governments.

So what actions are needed to administer justice about Israel? How could the world’s countries prevent it from committing further, predictable atrocities and seeking adventurous war-games in the region?

There needs to be unequivocal action in the international community to force Israel to end is aggression in Gaza. This should entail full suspension of diplomatic relations (as we have seen in Venezuela and Bolivia); full arms embargo on Israel; and the establishment of a criminal court under the ICC (mandated by the Security Council) to bring forward war crimes charges. while these maybe long-shots, we have to remember that the Palestinian people, unlike virtually any other people in the world, are wholly dependent on the international community to act to help, both because it is the international community that is responsible for the original partitioning and displacement of the Palestinians and because Palestinians do not have a state, an army or any means of self-defense. The UN General Assembly can also act and take dramatic action, and it should – and this would be a way to overcome a us veto.

And what about an international investigation on the illegal employment of unconventional weapons, mass killing of women and children, beleaguering the densely-populated strip for a long time and killing journalists, media correspondents and representatives of international communities?

There needs to be a tribunal established to try these crimes committed in Gaza. But this is truly not sufficient. The crimes of 60 years need to be addressed. Because of the impunity Israel has enjoyed since 1948, the lesson it learned is that there are no consequences for its actions and no limits. The Palestinians have borne the brunt of that ‘freedom to act’ for 60 years. It is not enough to say what Israel is doing in Gaza today is too much. What was done in Deir Yassin, in Tantoura, in Lid, in the Jenin refugee camp, in Israeli prisons, and hundreds of other places and over the course of years, has been beyond the limit of international law and human rights. Of course, I would welcome justice for the crimes committed in Gaza, but this should just be the beginning.

Progressive: Critic of Israel Threatened Before Talk in NY

Matthew Rothschild | The Progressive

Adam Shapiro has enemies.

Especially in the Jewish Defense Organization, the militant Zionist group that broke with the Jewish Defense League back in the 1980s.

The group’s website calls Shapiro a “maggot” and a “self-hating Jew” and “a Jew intent on destroying Israel.”

Shapiro, a human rights activist, is one of the co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement, a group that practices nonviolent civil disobedience against Israeli actions in Gaza and on the West Bank.

Hours before Shapiro spoke at a town hall meeting in New York on January 13, he received a threat from the Jewish Defense Organization. Also speaking at the town hall meeting were Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, the actor Vanessa Redgrave, Peter Weiss of the Center for Constitutional Rights, playwright and actor Naila Said (daughter of the great Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said), and Alan Goodman, a writer for Revolution newspaper.

The Jewish Defense Organization pasted leaflets on the window of Revolution Books, which was sponsoring the event.

The leaflet called Shapiro a “traitor to Israel, the Jews, and America.” It said he was a “Jewish John Walker Lindh” and condemned him for going to Ramallah to show solidarity with Yasser Arafat when the PLO leader was surrounded by Israeli tanks in 2002.

Shapiro, the leaflet said, “has made numerous statements of hate to both Israel and America.”

The leaflet also heaped abuse on Alan Goodman, who recently picked the Holocaust museum, according to the Jewish Defense Organization.

“These enemies to the Jews will pay very soon for their act of treachery,” the leaflet said. And it gave out Shapiro’s home address in Brooklyn, as well his parents’ address.

“I wasn’t too alarmed from a physical safety point of view,” says Shapiro, “but I was concerned that people would come to the event and disrupt it.”

That didn’t happen.

“There didn’t seem to be any disturbances outside or inside,” he says. But he recalls seeing a lot of police officers there.

Shapiro was pleased with the event. “There was a big crowd, about 500 people.

“If their goal was to intimidate us or to rally people to oppose the event, then they totally failed.”

Joseph Goodman, a spokesperson for the Jewish Defense Organization, says the leaflet was part of “Operation Crush Terror,” which, he says, is aimed at “self-hating Jews.”

He denies that the leaflet constituted a death threat. “No, it’s not,” he says. “The idea is to make sure no one rents a meeting place or an apartment to them. We want to run them out of their homes and get them fired from their jobs. We are going after them.”

When I told Goodman that I saw a press release from the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East condemning the threat against Shapiro, he said: “Do you think they’re freaked out?”

Hundreds Salute International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie’s Parents

Pat and Samir Twair | Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

The world was shocked March 16 by photos of International Solidarity Movement volunteer Rachel Corrie standing before an Israeli bulldozer that, seconds later, crushed her to death. The international outcry didn’t faze the Israeli government, however, which on April 5 shot ISM member Brian Avery in the face and on April 11 shot Tom Hurndall, who has been declared brain dead.

While global attention was focused on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Israeli tanks and bulldozers drove roughshod over Palestinian towns, killing Associated Press journalist Nazih Darwazeh in Nablus April 20 and British photographer James Miller on May 2. In the midst of this rampage, Southern California humanitarian groups decided to raise funds for ISM and honor Rachel Corrie’s parents for their dignity throughout the tragedy of losing their daughter.

The Israeli propaganda machine immediately launched its spin on the unnecessary deaths of American and British peace advocates, but Israel’s pattern of threatening, beating and now murdering foreign observers refutes the occupier’s explanations.

Eyewitnesses report that Rachel stood a couple of yards in front of the American-made Caterpillar D9 bulldozer about to demolish the home of a Palestinian physician. She looked the driver in the eye before he buried her in debris and drove over her, then went into reverse and crushed her a second time. Israel says the driver, who has not been reprimanded, said he did not see the American woman in a bright orange day-glo vest.

Just as invitations were issued to the May 17 event, Israeli troops raided the ISM office in Beit Sahour, confiscating computers, photographs and files and arresting three women on the premises. Adding insult to injury, Israel decreed on May 11 that all internationals entering Gaza must sign a “waiver” absolving Israeli soldiers from any deaths or injuries they inflict.

Nonetheless, a respite from these images of escalating brutality was offered May 17 with an evening of poetry, music and recollections of Rachel Corrie in the Hyatt Regency Orange County Hotel.

A violin solo by Dr. Nabil Azzam, a debke dance by children of Birzeit, and poetry by KPFK newsman Jerry Quickley and Dima Hilal opened a window onto Arab culture for the more than 600 guests on hand.

ISM spokesman Adam Shapiro vowed that the Israeli clampdown on international rights activists will not succeed.

“We all know the risks involved,” he said, “and this summer, we hope to have 1,000 volunteers to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. We’re going to go to the Apartheid Wall that is forcing Palestinians off their land and we’re going to take down that wall with our hands.”

Acknowledging that Israel has billions of dollars, and weapons and bulldozers, Shapiro said the Palestinians have sumud, a unity and strength of knowing their cause is just, which cannot be taken away.

“Many think nonviolence is passivity,” Shapiro noted, “but it means being pro-active.” In August 2001, 50 people volunteered with ISM. By December of the same year, 300 internationals and Palestinians took over a checkpoint between Ramallah and Birzeit. “We laid on the ground and when they threw tear gas canisters at us, we threw them away.”

He urged people to check the ISM Web site and to join in ISM Freedom Summer 2003.

In presenting the Muslim Public Affairs Council Courage Award, Dr. Maher Hathout said that courage is not the opposite of cowardice, but rather the principle of standing up to injustice.

“When Rachel Corrie faced that bulldozer and with her own hand tried to stop it from demolishing a house, she transcended the pettiness of life,” he declared. “Rachel became a flickering candle in thick darkness. For darkness cannot be complete if just one candle is lit.”

Rachel’s father, Craig Corrie, disclosed that, ironically, when he served as a combat engineer with the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam in 1970, he had been in charge of bulldozers.

“But I didn’t harm anyone,” commented the tall, greying insurance actuary.

He now realizes, he said, the courage it took for his daughter to put on her ISM vest every day and witness calculated cruelties and human rights abuses. In her hometown of Olympia, WA, she had encouraged her parents to talk to the street people and feel their pain.

“We don’t dwell on what we didn’t do or what might have been avoided,” Corrie concluded, “but we do demand more accountability from our government.”

Cynthia Corrie acknowledged that over the past few weeks she has found it difficult to adequately describe her daughter, because there were so many dimensions to her character. Rachel sent many e-mails home from Gaza, always stressing the need for Palestinian voices to be heard in the U.S. and marveling over the Palestinians’ ability to organize against all obstacles.

Rachel grew up in a home on two acres near Puget Sound, Mrs. Corrie said. By the fifth grade, Rachel wrote that she wanted to be a lawyer, dancer, actress, mother, wife, children’s author, distance runner, poet, pianist, pet store owner, astronaut, envioronmental and humanitarian activist, psychiatrist, ballet teacher and the first woman president. In the seventh grade she organized a student walkout on behalf of the teachers. When her mother told her she shouldn’t go through with the strike, Rachel said she had to because she’d already called a press conference.

During her sophomore year in high school, Rachel was an exchange student and lived with a Russian family for six weeks in the Sakhalin Islands.

“Rachel witnessed the hardships the family endured, and she realized how lucky Americans are,” Mrs. Corrie said. It was about this time that a teacher remarked that “Rachel is destined to make a difference.”

Rachel took one year off from her studies at Evergreen State University to serve in the Washington State Conservation Corps. Her volunteerism included weekly drop-ins over three years to mental patients in a hospital diversion house.

“Some of these patients talked publicly after Rachel’s death and mentioned the positive impact she had on their lives,” Mrs. Corrie continued.

“Rachel went to Gaza to do more than stand in front of bulldozers. She was doing the paper work to make Rafah a sister city of Olympia and was negotiating with a local storekeeper to sell hand crafts from Gaza. Rachel was concerned about the water shortage in Gaza and slept beside wells to protect them.”

The young idealist confided in e-mails that being in Gaza was the most important work of her life. “Rachel admitted she was often afraid,” her mother said, “but she wanted to see an end to the injustice perpetrated there.”

The emotional finale was the presentation of a hand-embroidered Palestinian jacket from Sameera Sood of the Palestinian-American Women’s Association to Mrs. Corrie. Other organizers of the ISM fund-raiser were American Friends Service Committee, Los Angeles-Palestine Solidarity Committee and MPAC.

And, as her teacher once predicted, Rachel has made a difference. Olympians are carrying out Rachel’s endeavors to establish a sister city relationship with Rafah and, according to Phan Nguyen, Olympia’s ISM coordinator, many people are signing up to serve with ISM this summer.

The Corries have established the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice.

Protest on Israeli Crackdown

It may be difficult to stop Israeli atrocities, but much can be done to expose Israel’s new push to expel foreigners bearing witness to its assault on the Palestinian population. A noisy, attention-getting May 16 demonstration was arranged within four days at the Los Angeles Israeli Consulate, where passing motorists honked their horns and gave the V sign to protesters on both sides of Wilshire Boulevard.

Many protesters wore hastily sewn orange and yellow day-glo vests, the uniform of International Solidarity Movement workers in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the rally, Michael Shaik of Canberra, Australia, recalled his experiences with the ISM from Jan. 16 to April 16. “The U.S. wants all these abuses covered up, they don’t want Israel to be embarrassed,” he told the crowd of 150 people. “This year the U.S. is giving $15 billion to Israel to keep up its occupation of the Palestinians. Israeli soldiers bear no responsibility, they can deliberately kill anyone with impunity.”

One month before Rachel Corrie was murdered, Shaik said, he had called the U.S. Consulate to say that American citizens were being threatened by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The response was that the Americans shouldn’t be there.

“What if Americans are killed?” he asked.

The consular officer responded that that was no excuse.

“I won’t let Rachel’s death be in vain,” the young volunteer told the Washington Report. “Brian [Avery] is my friend as well. So much must be told to the world. It is stupefying to see how the truth is muffled.”

Avery was shot in the face April 5 in Jenin by soldiers in an armored personnel carrier who opened fire on unarmed ISM members.

Protesters sent a letter to the Israeli Consulate demanding Israel rescind requirements that foreigners entering Gaza sign waivers absolving the Israeli army if they shoot them.

Across the street from the consulate, a dozen demonstrators held a 32-foot-long banner that read “No Occupation in Palestine or Iraq.” A husky, bearded protester wearing a red beret and plaid shirt carried a sign reading: “Sharon’s Orgy of Hatred, Bush’s Orgy of Greed.” As he approached the demonstration, he remarked, people asked, “Who’s Sharon, your old girlfriend? Are you advertising a porno flick?”