Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was shot dead on April 4 aged 52, was a Palestinian Jew and ran a theatre in the West Bank that provides a creative outlet in the harshest corner of the embattled Holy Land; despite these efforts the theatre's alumni have included gunmen and suicide-attackers
Juliano Mer-Khamis working with Palestinian children at the Freedom Theatre Photo: AFP
The Freedom Theatre was initially set up by Mer-Khamis's mother, Arna, a Jew who had served as an officer with the Zionist Haganah militia before the creation of Israel in 1948. Established in the 1980s, the theatre provided drama courses for young men in the northern West Bank town of Jenin. Many came from the camp that continues to house Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes near the city of Haifa during the war that accompanied Israel's birth.
Juliano Mer-Khamis was an established actor by the time his mother decided to start the theatre, but she frequently called on him to help out before, in 1997, she died. Drama then became impossible as the second Palestinian intifada plunged the region into a new and devastating round of violence. From 2000 Jenin became the principal town from which suicide bombers were sent into Israel, and in 2002 Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield to crush militants across the West Bank.
The fighting in Jenin refugee camp was particularly fierce, with dozens dying on both sides. After the battle ended, Mer-Khamis returned to find the theatre that he and his mother had established razed to the ground. The fate of many of its former drama students was equally grim.
One young man had become a militant leader and been shot by Israeli soldiers; another budding actor who joined Islamic Jihad had also been killed; his brother, meanwhile, had carried out a suicide mission in Israel. Mer-Khamis documented their stories in a well-received film, Arna's Children (2004).
As the violence of the intifada ebbed, he returned to Jenin to resurrect the Freedom Theatre. He was joined there by Zakaria Zubeidi, the former military leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who vowed to give up fighting, but whose formidable reputation none the less offered Mer-Khamis, seen by some as a interloper, much-needed protection.
Soon the theatre began to stage innovative productions that again drew on local participants (including some girls, who were recruited after negotiations with their families). But while audiences were enthusiastic, sections of increasingly-conservative Palestinian society were not. An adaptation in 2009 of Orwell's Animal Farm caused an outcry with what appeared to be its pointed satire of local politics. Others strongly objected to men and women appearing on stage together. Two arson attacks on the theatre followed, though it remained unclear if they were ordered by disgruntled officials or offended Islamists.
Either way, it was clear that Mer-Khamis was upsetting powerful figures in Jenin. But by then he had burned his bridges in Israel, where many regard anyone who helps Palestinians as a traitor. The result was that Mer-Khamis, who tried to be accepted by both Israelis and Palestinians, ended up accepted by neither.
Such a fate was perhaps implicit in his parentage. He was born on May 29 1958 in Nazareth to his Jewish mother Arna, and Saliba Khamis, a Christian Palestinian. It was Saliba Khamis who introduced Arna to the Communist Party, and together they espoused the idea of a bi-national state in which Jews and Palestinians would live side by side.
Juliano's early life was a struggle against the discrimination he felt for not having a Jewish father. He even claimed that doctors had refused to treat his mother after she gave birth to him because she was not married to an Israeli. As a result he signed up to carry out his compulsory military service with the elite Israeli paratroop brigade "to prove that I was more Jewish than the Jews". But his service ended in disgrace when he got into a fight with another officer and was jailed.
His professional acting career got under way in 1984 when he featured with Diane Keaton in the adaptation of John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl. Afterwards he appeared frequently in Israeli films and television series.
But his mother's work in Jenin also drew him to explore his Palestinian identity for the first time, and far from rejecting his Arab heritage, he began to embrace it.
Amid the mutual suspicion of the post-intifada period, however, such apparently split loyalties were not wholly welcome on either side, and Mer-Khamis was often under pressure to declare for one or the other. He refused. "I can't choose," he said. "I'm 100 per cent Jewish and I'm 100 per cent Arab."
He tried instead to foster the idea of a peaceful "cultural" intifada to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. "My understanding of the struggle was totally different when I held a rifle," said Rabia Turkman, a former fighter with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who joined the first drama students when the Freedom Theatre reopened in 2006. "I consider myself a freedom fighter when I am on the stage. Juliano is the one who taught me how to resist through culture."
Mer-Khamis knew his work put his life in danger. A leaflet distributed in 2009 made threats against his life. "I do not pretend to be a hero," he said afterwards. "Of course I am scared."
He was driving home from the theatre when the assassin struck. His baby son was on his lap and a nanny in the passenger seat as five bullets were fired. Mer-Khamis died but the others in the car survived. The killing provoked the usual round of mutual accusations, with Palestinian factions blaming each other, as well as Israel. An alleged member of the Islamist group Hamas was subsequently arrested; Hamas denied the man was affiliated to it.
Juliano Mer-Khamis is survived by his wife, Jenny, who is pregnant with twins, and by a son and a daughter. His dual identity marked the day of his funeral, when the coffin was brought from Israel, through an Israeli checkpoint, into the West Bank, where it was draped with a Palestinian flag. His body was then taken back into Israel and buried next to his mother, in the kibbutz Ramot-Menashe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8461606/Juliano-Mer-Khamis.html
Soon the theatre began to stage innovative productions that again drew on local participants (including some girls, who were recruited after negotiations with their families). But while audiences were enthusiastic, sections of increasingly-conservative Palestinian society were not. An adaptation in 2009 of Orwell's Animal Farm caused an outcry with what appeared to be its pointed satire of local politics. Others strongly objected to men and women appearing on stage together. Two arson attacks on the theatre followed, though it remained unclear if they were ordered by disgruntled officials or offended Islamists.
Either way, it was clear that Mer-Khamis was upsetting powerful figures in Jenin. But by then he had burned his bridges in Israel, where many regard anyone who helps Palestinians as a traitor. The result was that Mer-Khamis, who tried to be accepted by both Israelis and Palestinians, ended up accepted by neither.
Such a fate was perhaps implicit in his parentage. He was born on May 29 1958 in Nazareth to his Jewish mother Arna, and Saliba Khamis, a Christian Palestinian. It was Saliba Khamis who introduced Arna to the Communist Party, and together they espoused the idea of a bi-national state in which Jews and Palestinians would live side by side.
Juliano's early life was a struggle against the discrimination he felt for not having a Jewish father. He even claimed that doctors had refused to treat his mother after she gave birth to him because she was not married to an Israeli. As a result he signed up to carry out his compulsory military service with the elite Israeli paratroop brigade "to prove that I was more Jewish than the Jews". But his service ended in disgrace when he got into a fight with another officer and was jailed.
His professional acting career got under way in 1984 when he featured with Diane Keaton in the adaptation of John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl. Afterwards he appeared frequently in Israeli films and television series.
But his mother's work in Jenin also drew him to explore his Palestinian identity for the first time, and far from rejecting his Arab heritage, he began to embrace it.
Amid the mutual suspicion of the post-intifada period, however, such apparently split loyalties were not wholly welcome on either side, and Mer-Khamis was often under pressure to declare for one or the other. He refused. "I can't choose," he said. "I'm 100 per cent Jewish and I'm 100 per cent Arab."
He tried instead to foster the idea of a peaceful "cultural" intifada to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. "My understanding of the struggle was totally different when I held a rifle," said Rabia Turkman, a former fighter with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who joined the first drama students when the Freedom Theatre reopened in 2006. "I consider myself a freedom fighter when I am on the stage. Juliano is the one who taught me how to resist through culture."
Mer-Khamis knew his work put his life in danger. A leaflet distributed in 2009 made threats against his life. "I do not pretend to be a hero," he said afterwards. "Of course I am scared."
He was driving home from the theatre when the assassin struck. His baby son was on his lap and a nanny in the passenger seat as five bullets were fired. Mer-Khamis died but the others in the car survived. The killing provoked the usual round of mutual accusations, with Palestinian factions blaming each other, as well as Israel. An alleged member of the Islamist group Hamas was subsequently arrested; Hamas denied the man was affiliated to it.
Juliano Mer-Khamis is survived by his wife, Jenny, who is pregnant with twins, and by a son and a daughter. His dual identity marked the day of his funeral, when the coffin was brought from Israel, through an Israeli checkpoint, into the West Bank, where it was draped with a Palestinian flag. His body was then taken back into Israel and buried next to his mother, in the kibbutz Ramot-Menashe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8461606/Juliano-Mer-Khamis.html
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