Tag: Ramallah

by Sheryl McCarthy
Originally published in Newsday

Wherever Stuart Shapiro may be, he gets my vote for father of the year.

His son, Adam, is a Jewish child of Brooklyn who in the last few years has been living in the Mideast and advocating for the rights of Palestinians. Last week, he spent a night in Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah while Israeli soldiers shelled the town. Arafat’s bunker was filled with the dead and dying, and Adam Shapiro went there, he later explained, to try to persuade the Israelis to allow ambulances in to treat the wounded.

But after saying on television that he ate breakfast with Arafat and comparing the house-to- house raids on Palestinians in Ramallah to Nazi raids during World War II, Shapiro has become a villain. He’s been branded a traitor, denounced as “the Jewish Taliban” and compared to John Walker Lindh, who’s charged with having been a soldier in Osama bin Laden’s army.

The death threats to Adam Shapiro’s parents’ home in Brooklyn were so numerous that they were forced to flee the state temporarily. But, amid all the excoriations of his son, Stuart Shapiro said the greatest thing any father could say.

“Of all the people in the world,” he told a Newsday reporter, “I believe my son.”

Some parents would be ringing their child up in Ramallah: “Have you lost your mind? What do you think you’re doing? Do you know what people are saying, how this is going to hurt us with our friends? You pack up and come home right now!”

But Stuart Shapiro, convinced that in a place of endless hatred and endless revenge his son is one of the few who are trying to understand the other side, is standing by him.

“If my brother says these human rights atrocities are taking place against innocent Palestinian children, then we have to believe him,” says Noah Shapiro, who’s acting as spokesman for the family.

“But in no uncertain terms does that sympathy toward Palestinian children mean that we support suicide bombings.”

The Middle East is a region whose troubles the world has grown sick of. The Palestinians are now terrorizing Israelis through random acts of violence, and the Israelis respond with tanks and guns, bombardments and house-to-house raids.

The two leaders in this war are loathsome in their intransigence. Arafat is incompetent, cowardly, ineffectual and more concerned about his own survival than about a workable peace for his people. He probably doesn’t have the ability to stop the terrorist attacks, but he hasn’t even tried.

Ariel Sharon is a malevolent former terrorist himself and the worst possible prime minister Israel could have now. He thinks he can bomb the Palestinians into submission and hates Arafat so badly that the only thing keeping Arafat alive is pressure from the United States and other Western countries.

Few in this war can argue anything but their own long-raging grievances, and almost no one in a leadership role is willing to reach out to the other side.

Into this melee came Adam Shapiro. Raised in a non-observant Jewish home, he became interested in the Middle East and went to Yemen to study Arabic – not Islam, as some have written. He was affected by what he saw there, and started working with a program that brought Jewish and Palestinian kids to a camp in the United States: the idea being that, if they actually got to know each other, they might like each other.

Upset to see Palestinians barred by Israeli security forces from going to work, and their homes and villages razed if a relative was suspected of being a terrorist, he was drawn to protest the Israeli government’s actions. Most recently, he was trying to get ambulances to wounded Palestinians in areas ravaged by Israeli shelling.

Noah Shapiro says his brother believes in the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and is at the opposite extreme from Hamas, Hezbollah and bin Laden. If Sharon had asked him to breakfast, Noah Shapiro said, he would have gone.

So who is Adam Shapiro a traitor to? Not to Israel. He’s not an Israeli citizen. Not to his religion. He’s not a practicing Jew. And not to the United States government, which claims to support equity in human affairs and the rights of innocent citizens. By condemning Arafat for not stopping the terrorists, but only mildly rebuking Sharon for waging all-out war on the Palestinians, we’ve betrayed our own values.

Adam Shapiro wanted to restore a little equity to this equation. And, in a season already long on heroes, this makes him another one in my book.

PHILLIPS: Well, we’re about to get an eyewitness account now of the Israeli siege of Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah. Adam Shapiro is an American living in Israel. He volunteered to help attend to wounded Arafat guards inside the compound. He joins us now live from Ramallah.

Hello, Adam.

ADAM SHAPIRO, VOLUNTEER RESCUE WORKER, INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT: Hello, how are you doing? I’d just like to correct one thing from the start. I’m an American citizen living in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, the occupied Palestinian territories not Israel.

PHILLIPS: Let’s talk about — let’s get down to why you are there, Adam, and this organization, The International Solidarity Movement. Give us a little background and tell us why you are there and what this group is about.

SHAPIRO: The International Solidarity Movement together with the Grassroots International Protection For The Palestinian People are two groups of activists working together with Palestinians to try and provide protection for Palestinians in such cases of invasion and intense military terrorist invasion and assault on the Palestinians. They cannot walk in their streets. Ambulances cannot drive around to pick up wounded and dead people without being shot at, without being confiscating, and the medics being arrested.

I was riding on an ambulance yesterday helping to secure the safety of that ambulance, to go around and pick up wounded people, innocent civilians who are being hit by Israel force, by tanks, by gunmen, by snipers located throughout the city. Towards the end of the evening, we received a phone call that there were injured inside the presidential compound and that no ambulance had been able to get in, that they were being shot at. We approached — I spoke in English and identified myself as an American to the soldiers and that seemed to give us the opportunity to negotiate for about three hours before we were finally allowed in. I then proceeded to stay inside for about 24 hours to try and mobilize international attention as to what was going on.

PHILLIPS: And I understand that you spent time with Yasser Arafat. And I want to get to that in just a moment. But Adam, I have to ask you; first of all, you come from a Jewish family. Are you a practicing Jew?

SHAPIRO: No, I’m not and I believe that is an issue of personal decision in terms of religion. And it has no bearing on what I’m doing here. The Palestinians, whether they know that — my family name or not, it does not matter. I’m a human being here to try and help fellow human beings. This is not about politics between Jew and Arab, between Muslim and Jew. This is a case of human dignity, human freedom and justice that the Palestinians are struggling for against an occupier, an oppressor.

The violence did not start with Yasser Arafat. The violence started with the occupation. There is something, as Mr. Wayne Owens said, that the Americans can do and there’s something that Israel can do to end this and that is to lift the occupation, to remove the settlement, to remove the military occupation of Palestinian land and allow the Palestinians to live in freedom and independence.

General Zinni, if he’s willing, he has the opportunity — I’m sure he’s been active talking on the phone. I went into President Arafat’s compound and I am willing to escort General Zinni in there myself, to go with him. He knows how to reach me. We contacted his office to try and get more assistance inside. If he is willing to go inside, to meet with President Arafat, to really put an end to this and to try and present a picture to the world of what is really happening, we can make this happen.

PHILLIPS: Adam, I got to tell you, I’m just fascinated. I’m fascinated by your background and why you are in Ramallah. And I’m even more fascinated by the fact that you sat down and hung out with Yasser Arafat. I want to know, what did you talk about? What did you tell him? Did you have any influence on him?

SHAPIRO: I don’t know if I had any influence, but he certainly was pleased that were internationals here in Ramallah, in Bethlehem, who are trying to help, trying to bring attention to what is going on, trying to bring pressure from the media, from the diplomatic community on what is happening. The compound is under complete siege. There are soldiers, now I’ve heard, on the ground floor of President Arafat’s compound and they have shut up the place.

PHILLIPS: And Adam…

SHAPIRO: The building constantly shakes…

PHILLIPS: … we have been reporting that, absolutely.

SHAPIRO: … from tank fire.

PHILLIPS: And we have. We’ve been reporting that. I’m just curious, have you — did you take the opportunity to say to Yasser Arafat, why not come and condemn what is going on, come out and make a statement in Arabic because that is what the President of the United States is just asking for?

SHAPIRO: President Arafat has done this repeatedly. I understand Arabic. I read the newspapers and I listen to the TV stations here. President Arafat, after every terrorist incident, every suicide bombing, after every action, has condemned this loss of life, of civilian lives on both sides.

The Sharon government, sometimes will apologize after it kills an innocent civilian, but it does not apologize for raping the cities and for going in and carrying out terrorist actions, going to house to house much like the Nazis did in World War II, going house to house to house tearing holes through the walls, roughing up people, killing people, assassinating people. This is a terrorist government funded, by the way, by the United States government to the tune of $300 million a year in U.S. military aid. These are American helicopters and tanks and F-16s doing this damage to the Palestinian people.

PHILLIPS: Adam Shapiro, we appreciate you coming on with us this morning. You have quite an interesting story. Thank you.

We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back.

SHAPIRO: Thank you very much.