Link to Detroit News Story with Photos of the Happy, Blood-Drenched Couple"It is not political in any way, shape or form," says bride Huwaida Arraf of her marriage to Adam Shapiro on Sunday. /caption-->
Metro area Palestinian activist weds
She ties knot with Jewish co-worker. Their peace mission drew international attention.; Re-enactment set on French coast honors historic invasion
By Shawn D. Lewis / The Detroit News
TROY -- It was a touching ceremony that combined traditions from both Judaism and Catholicism.
Peace activists Huwaida Arraf, 26, of Roseville and Adam Shapiro, 30, of New York, who drew international recognition for their mission in the West Bank, were married Sunday afternoon before 300 friends and relatives in a Catholic Church in Troy.
She is a Palestinian-American Catholic. He is a nonobservant Jew. But their union is a love story, not a political statement heralding peace between Palestinians and Jews.
The combined traditions included a recitation from the book of Genesis in Arabic, and the Jewish tradition of the groom breaking a glass with his shoe.
"It is not political in any way, shape or form," said Arraf. "I don't even think along those lines. I'm marrying someone from a Jewish background. I have many friends who are Israeli. This 'Arab vs. Jew' thing is misleading, and just shows that people are not listening to what the Palestinian people are calling for. It is a basic struggle for freedom and liberty."
Arraf family friend Marina Haddad Hackett of Sterling Heights, was up until 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning with other friends and family members, assembling hand-stitched favors for guests. The favors only arrived from the West Bank Friday.
They were left behind when Huwaida Arraf was escorted by Israeli police from an Israeli prison to the airport, following a five-day hunger strike. She had been imprisoned for trying to enter the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with other peace activists.
"I am so happy for her and I'm happy she's safe," said Hackett. "This just shows Arabs and Jews can get along. It's cliche, but love really does conquer all."
Said Arraf's father, George Arraf, who initially had reservations about his daughter marrying outside their religion: "I'm feeling just great now."
Five television cameras and the 300 invited guests witnessed the ceremony.
Their path to the church wedding began in Jerusalem, where they first met two years ago. Shapiro was director of Seeds of Peace, an international organization that promotes peace between cultures; Arraf was a program coordinator.
After almost a year of working together, Shapiro "made an initial nice gesture," said Arraf, and their romance began.
Sunday, their wedded life began in the Troy church, a mini-United Nations with guests coming from as far away as Jerusalem and Germany, as well as across the United States.
The six bridesmaids wore shades of aubergine adorned with sheer shawls; the groomsmen wore dark suits with light purple boutonnieres.
The 30-year-old groom put aside the mission of peace for a few days as he left his home in New York to join his bride-to-be a few days before the wedding.
"I'm very excited, and am very much looking forward to this wedding," Shapiro said before Sunday's ceremony. "Now that it is actually happening, I'm very happy."
His family, who embrace the union, received death threats after Shapiro, a leader in the International Solidarity Movement, appeared in news broadcasts worldwide as a spokesman for foreign activists who had joined Yasser Arafat in his compound, under siege by Israeli soldiers. The Shapiros were forced to move temporarily and had round-the-clock security for a while when they returned to their New York home.
The backlash heightened three weeks ago when Shapiro's father, Stuart Shapiro, was fired from a part-time job at a private Jewish academy where he taught math.
"It was ugliness, plain and simple," Adam Shapiro said. "My father was not the kind of person going out and making statements. He is a professional and had been teaching there quite a while when that happened.
"It's just indicative of a lack of rational, intelligent discussion and dialogue that needs to happen."
Arraf, a University of Michigan graduate, called her future father-in-law's dismissal "just another act committed out of blindness and intolerance, and it is reprehensible. It was a private institution led by Jewish rabbis, and to tie everything they do into politics is narrow-minded."
All the international attention created by the union will temporarily be put on hold as the couple honeymoons for a few days in Jamaica.
Then the newlyweds return to the West Bank to continue their mission of peace.
You can reach Edward L. Cardenas at (586) 468-0529 or ecardenas@detnews.com.
"My father was not the kind of person going out and making statements.Oh, BS. He was spouting his son's crap, on TV and in print. I clearly remember him saying that, of all the people in the world, he'd believe HIS SON about Israeli atrocities and the "hundreds massacred by the IDF in Jenin". (Oddly enough, his son wasn't in Jenin at the time.)
And Adam and Huwaida blame a private school who can hire and fire whoever they wish, instead of considering that his father's dismissal might have had something to do with their own actions and their constant publicity-seeking for their cause.
Cry me a river. Dad can go get another part-time job in a public school, where they seem to like communists and terrorist sympathizers.
Thank You for posting the Art. First time I had tried to link, didn't work to good. I just wanted to let you know how it was covered here.
the Jewish tradition of the groom breaking a glass with his shoe. Does this putz have a clue what this ritual is supposed to represent? As it so happened yesterday I was at a real Jewish wedding (Jewish boy married Jewish girl--what a concept!) where this custom was explained for the benefit of people who might not understand why it is done.
"I will put Jerusalem at the head of all my joys." Meaning, that even at a wedding we mourn the destrustion of the Temple, caused mainly by jerks like Adam Shapiro.
I heard on the radio today him and his wife were getting kicked out again. Prostesting on the West Bank. AH S*** they gotta come back here.
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