This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.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 the West Bank and 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.
[citation needed] Shapiro worked with "Seeds of Peace," an organization seeks to foster dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian youth.
[2] During the 2002 Israeli incursions into the West Bank and Gaza, ISM members would ride in ambulances in the hope of expediting their passage through checkpoints.
He recounts hearing that there were wounded people at the headquarters of Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian National Authority, and he took an ambulance there to negotiate humanitarian access for the injured.
Trapped inside by Israeli troops who refused to let them leave after reaching the injured,[2][3] they were forced to remain overnight.
Shapiro's life was threatened, as well as that of his family, credit for which was taken by local chapters of Betar and the Jewish Defense Organization that marched on his home.
Filmmakers explored the history of the conflict in Darfur and interviewed refugees and displaced persons, particularly victimized women and children.
[10] Shapiro explained his interest in a Democracy Now interview, saying: "[J]ust looking around and seeing what I had been doing in the Occupied Territories, the recent film I had done in Iraq, I realized that if nobody else was going to do it, then it's incumbent upon us as individuals to try to do whatever we could.