Huwaida Arraf

Family and education

Arraf was born to two Palestinian parents - her mother from the West Bank town of Beit Sahour and her father from the Palestinian village of Mi'ilya, in the Galilee, which was taken over by Israel in 1948 and became part of the state. Under Israeli law, she has Israeli citizenship through her father, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. Her parents moved from the West Bank to Detroit, Michigan, Arraf's birthplace, to be able to raise her away from the violence in the West Bank. She and her parents were able to visit Israel every few years until Arraf was ten years old.

Arraf majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She spent a year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew on a kibbutz. Arraf later earned a J.D. at American University's Washington College of Law. Her focus was on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with a particular interest in war crimes prosecution.

As a law student Arraf conducted research for the Public International Law and Policy Group, which provides pro bono legal assistance to governments involved in conflicts. Arraf also worked with the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the Washington College of Law, where she represented clients before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on issues ranging from indigenous lands rights to cross-border abductions and irregular rendition.

Professional activities

In the spring of 2000, Arraf traveled to Jerusalem to serve as program coordinator for Seeds of Peace, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that seeks to foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian youth.

In 2001 her title at the Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem was Regional Coordinator. Arraf married Adam Shapiro, another ISM co-founder, in 2002. They met while both were working at the Jerusalem center of Seeds of Peace.

In 2003 Arraf and her husband were jointly awarded a Fellowship by the Echoing Green Foundation in New York, which they subsequently declined.

Involvement with the International Solidarity Movement

Arraf co-founded the ISM in 2001, while living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She founded the ISM with members of two Palestinian foundations with strong international ties, the Holy Land Trust and the Rapprochement Centre. At the ISM, she has participated in the training of thousands of volunteers from around the world in non-violence and in human-rights monitoring and reporting.

Arraf ’s ISM brands its method as “nonviolent direct action”: the members of the group knowingly place themselves in controversial situations. Arraf and her husband Shapiro admit that it is important to understand that Palestinians have a legal right under the Geneva Convention to resist with arms, as they are an occupied people upon whom force and violence is being used at the same time they advocate non violent direct action as the best strategy to overcome Israeli oppression and occupation. They advocate that instead of turning to violence, Hamas send men eager for jihad to non violently stand out in roadblocks as martyrs, saying this should be considered by the jihad-is as no less noble as carrying out a suicide bombing which would kill people and that they would still be considered shaheed Allah.

Arraf has acknowledged that the ISM has direct contact with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP—all US-designated terror organizations. She later clarified, saying that, in acknowledging those connections, but has insisted that in acknowledging those connections, she was “offering concrete examples of the ways in which these groups were engaging in nonviolent resistance.”

During the second Intifada, Arraf organized what she termed a demonstration against Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Arraf was the chair of the Free Gaza Movement, the organization behind the Gaza Freedom Flotillas - a series of groups of ships carrying Pro-Palestinian activists that were organized to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. She was aboard the 2008 Free Gaza boats as well as the 2010 flotilla that was raided by Israeli commandos on May 31. Using a satellite phone on board, Arraf stated that their plan was to have the boats keep heading toward Gaza “until they either disable our boats or jump on board.”

At the time of the raid, Arraf was aboard the Challenger 1, one of the smallest ships (30 feet) of the flotilla. On Thursday, 3 June 2010, she provided her version of the events on Challenger 1 in an interview on Democracy Now.

Arraf resigned from this position in October, 2012, following a series of anti-Semitic tweets posted on the official Twitter feed of the Free Gaza Movement.