OPINIONS
OPINIONS
A Love Born in the Trenches
By Rodney Samaan
 Adam and Huwaida Shapiro in the occupied territories. |
I recently had the pleasure of seeing Adam and Huwaida Shapiro in what seemed to me a coincidental moment in my life story. What was even odd about the encounter was that a few days before our meeting, they were in New York to appear on the Donahue show.
We met at my apartment in Woodley Park, a very culturally diverse area of Washington, DC. I had been in DC because I was doing a health policy rotation with a primary care organization. Huwaida and Adam were in DC because Adam was beginning a Ph.D. program in international relations at George Washington University. We went to the top floor of the apartment complex to the roof and talked about the Middle East.
Adam Shapiro was the original creator of Seeds of Peace and although I had heard abut the organization and their purpose, I had no idea that the organization was run by a Jew and for that sake, Adam Shapiro.
Huwaida and I were friends when we both lived in Washington, D.C. about 3 years ago, where we met at a middle eastern youth leadership conference hosted by the Jerusalem Fund. She worked as the head secretary for Jim Zogby at the Arab American Institute and I worked for a non profit public health organization called the National Assembly on School-Based Healthcare. We were both young educated Palestinians who had both lived in Jerusalem and seen the horrors and the degradation of the occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank. Unlike Huwaida, I lived in Jerusalem for one month on Salah Al Din in the Albright Institute-an archeological research facility, my goal of being there was to research the historical and ideological claims that Israel had on Jerusalem, basically, I was researching the origin of the Zionist movement and the modern development of the state of Israel. While there, I had the opportunity to see not only the degradation and humiliation of Palestinians in Jerusalem, but I also had the chance to visit a clinic in Beit Sahour, which is about 5 minutes from Bethlehem, there we had a chance to meet a physician and see their meager working conditions in this makeshift clinic, where the physicians made $200 a month. The experience was quite humbling. I also had a chance to visit the Gaza Strip with some UN hired civil engineers, and see what was an amazing manifestation of occupation. The Palestinian civil engineer told me that the Gaza used to be to be a haven in the 1940s, a place more like Beirut, where people would vacation and come for reprieve. However, when we visited, there were signs of suffering everywhere for the one million Palestinians living in one of the most densely populated cities in the world with a fertility rate of about 12, one of the highest in the region. It was Gaza, where I had the chance to see Palestinian women come ask us for help, one lady came to our UN car and asked us to see if we could get her son back who was just taken by the Israelis.
Huwaida on the other hand was in Jerusalem for the entire year doing a study abroad program at Hebrew University-the site of the recent bombing of American Jews studying there. She became fluent in Hebrew and became enamored in understand the Jewish position. She vowed to return to help. I had met her a few years after this experience.
Our lives separated when I moved back to Lexington, KY to begin medical school and she moved to Jerusalem to work for Seeds of Peace, we kept in touch via email and she would keep me updated on the situation on the ground in Palestine/Israel. She had worked for Seeds of Peace as the Program Director and was hired by Adam Shapiro, their relationships was purely professional, but after a year or two with Seeds of Peace, she decided to help establish a Palestinian Solidarity Movement, which would work by recruiting European and American citizens to come to Israel/Palestine and help prevent violence towards Palestinians by acting as human shields, they knew this could work because Israelis would never dare shoot at European and American citizens because the causalities would ruin their reputation with the Westernized world. This movement began and was very successful in recruiting and changing the mindset of the Israeli soldiers. This was evidenced by the increasing resistance of Israeli reserve soldiers to fight against Palestinians. These refusiniks have formed an extensive movement that are opposed to serving in the occupied territories.
After the new year in 2002, I received an email from Huwaida from Jerusalem telling me that she was engaged and that she hoped that I would be able to come to the wedding; she also attached pictures of their resistance movement, which was on all over the internet and even showed me a picture of her fiancé, it was a picture of Adam, he was trying to push through a group of Israeli shoulders and the struggle was evident in the photo. I was amazed by the photos and happy to hear that she would wed. Huwaida sent me an invitation to the wedding, which was held outside of Dearborn, Michigan, which is the largest aggregation of Arab Americans in the U.S. I went up to Dearborn with my nephew Charlie, and when we arrived at the Chaldean Church, we were surprised to see that there were a number of news vans at the wedding (I later learned that Al Jazeera was also there). When the wedding began, the priest began by pointing out that this was unique wedding because this entailed two ceremonies, one that was Jewish and one that was Christian. I must admit, I was surprised, I had no idea that the person she was marrying was Jewish and I quickly realized the political and social ramifications of such a union. Although, Huwaida and Adam insisted that there union was purely out of love, it was difficult not to place it in a political context considering the Palestinian/Israeli context. Indeed, I was not the only one that placed it in such a context. I later learned that when the Jews in Brooklyn found out that Adam Shapiro was marrying a Palestinian, that they protested at his house and his father worksite, later his father was fired from his teaching position in Brooklyn and the family was forced to move out of their house. The Jews also threatened to protest at his wedding, which is why it was held at an undisclosed location. There was also the infamous story of Adam Shapiro in the New York Post, which claimed that Adam was the “Jewish Taliban” both for this marriage and his encounters with Arafat at his compound in Ramallah while it was being bombed. For many American Jews, who for many, claim to be more radical than most Jews in Israel, Adam was the epitome of evil and betrayal. They could not understand how a Jew could be supportive of the Palestinians. But for Adam, this was simple, the Palestinians were a marginalized group of people who had lived through year of occupation and degradation, their situation lacked hope and promise, he was there to provide this.
The significance of Adam Shapiro is great for the Middle East and the Arab world because for me, it causes me to think about the plight of the character and integrity of the Arab people. Here we have a Jew who is sacrificing his reputation, his life, his family for the Palestinian people, and then we have many Arab countries that act as if they are in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but we have seen many historic moments of betrayal. Also, we have many Arab men and women who either know nothing about the situation or if they know about it, are not interested in fighting for them because there are too many risks. For me, this leads to me to reconsider my ethnicity. One’s ethnicity is one’s identity, it is the core of their individuality and their ideas. If one takes this as the definition, then we can judge one’s ethnicity by where they were born, what religion they have or what language they can speak. Although, Adam is fluent in Arabic, he is more Palestinian than many Palestinians themselves because he is a manifestation of their courage and struggle. Thus, my ethnicity is defined by the people who speak the language of bravery and courage, whose dialect contains accents of justice and integrity. My ethnicity is Palestinian because they represent the human condition and how the most basic rights and wants of an individual and a people is freedom.
Rodney Samaan is completing his medical student at the University of Kentucky. He has written numerous Op/Eds on the Middle East in national (USA Today) and regional newspapers (Lexington Herald-Leader). He can be reached at: r_samaan@hotmail.com
