Adam Shapiro (activist)

Adam Shapiro (born 1972) is an American co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization, the stated mission of which is to bring civilians from around the world to resist nonviolently the Israeli occupation of West Bank and previously the Gaza Strip. He became famous for visiting Yasser Arafat in his Mukataa (government palace) in Ramallah while it was besieged during the March 2002 Israeli military operation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Shapiro was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and brought up in a Jewish home, but he doesn't "identify as Jewish. I see it as a religion rather than an ethnicity and, as I have no religious feelings, I don't regard myself as Jewish."

Shapiro received his B.A. in political science and history from Washington University in St. Louis in 1993. He subsequently spent a year studying Arabic in Yemen after receiving his M.A. in Arab studies at Georgetown University. He received his M.A. in politics from New York University. He was a doctoral candidate at American University in Washington.

Shapiro worked with "Seeds of Peace," an organization seeks to foster dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian youth. In 2001, he was Co-Director of the Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem. There he met Huwaida Arraf, a Christian Palestinian American, whom he married in 2002. In 2001 they, along with other Palestinian activists, co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

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