Freedom: the motto and life's work of Juliano Mer-Khamis, shot dead in Jenin refugee camp
Marian Houk
April 16, 2011
Freedom.
It's more than just a word. For Palestinians, today, it is the goal.
It was also the life work of Juliano Mer Khamis, legendary Israeli Palestinian actor and director and activist.
And, it is no exaggeration to say he died for it.
Before he was gunned down on April 4 in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, outside his Freedom Theatre, the Nazareth-born Israeli actor and producer lived for most of the last decade in the Jenin Refugee Camp. He also kept a home in Israel's northern port city of Haifa.
He was shot by five bullets, in what was described as a professional assassination. No one has so far been arrested or charged with his murder. And no motive has been determined.
Juliano was the founder and Director of the Freedom Theatre, alongside amnestied former Al-Aqsa brigades Zakaria Zubeidi (who eapparently joined the Freedom Theatre in order to protect it).
Who else has been assassinated by five bullets? Naim Khader, for example, the former PLO representative to the European Commission in Brussels, shot down outside his house one morning in the spring of 1981. Five bullets, in those days, was iconic... of a whole list of Palestinian assassinations, blamed depending on politics alternatively or simultaneously on renegade Palestinian mercenary Abu Nidal, or on the Israeli Mossad, for which no one has ever been brought to justice.]
Juliano explained his goals in this video:
"This place never had a theater ... Don't let this view deceive you. We are sitting in the midst of the most attacked and poor refugee camp in Palestine, the refugee camp of Jenin"...
"We are talking about almost 3,000 children under the age of 15 suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It means they pee in their pants when they're 11, it means they cannot concentrate, they cannot deal with each other without violence ... This camp, and look around, is sieged by electric fence all around it, people cannot go out, or in, unless they have a permit. We have two gates, like a big prison, and we are in the midst, trying to serve this population, trying to bring some normality, some sanity, to some people here" ...
UPDATE: In a longer version of the film, posted by Yusef Munayyer here. Juliano says "Our duty, as artists, is to rebuild this destruction".
Juliano was buried two days later, on 6 April in Kibbutz Ramot Menashe -- in sudden sunshine after days of rain, on a plateau at the top of a hill in the Galilee region of Israel.
The funeral was completely secular -- there was no religious figure officiating, there were no religious symbols or references, and there were no prayers -- but it was in a Jewish cemetery, where Juliano was buried near his mother, Arna (Orna) Mer. who was described in an article published on Israel's YNet website tonight as a "relentless idealist".
His father, a Christian Arab, Saliba Khamis -- described in the same article as an "intellectual" - is buried in a cemetery in Haifa.
The YNet article, posted here, noted that "Nothing was ever conventional in the lives of the Mer-Khamis brothers, from their dual identity to their unique names".
Juliano once said in an interview -- and this has been widely quoted since his assassination -- that he was "100 percent Jewish, and 100 percent Palestinian".
In the funeral, Israeli film director Udi Aloni, who had agreed to work with Juliano in the Freedom Theatre, remembered Juliano's words: "I am from here, and I am who I am".
Arna founded the Freedom Theater in Jenin Refugee Camp in 1988-1989 during the first Palestinian Intifada [though she apparently called it the Stone Theatre] -- throwing stones remains one of the symbols of the first Palestinian Intifada. Her theatre was destroyed, years after her death from cancer, during the second Palestinian Intifada, in the Spring 2002 Israeli invasion of the Jenin Refugee Camp to eradicate suicide bomb cells who had prepared bombs and sent Palestinians to make attacks in Israeli cities. Juliano, who had previously worked with his mother, re-built it as the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp in 2006.
Former al-Aqsa Brigades fighter Zakaria Zubeidi (who was also a former theater student of Arna's) was a co-director of Juliano's Freedom Theatre, apparently in part because of the political protection Zubeidi could provide in a tense and tumultuous environment.
Juliano and his young partner, Julie, who is Finnish and the mother of his younger children (including as-yet-unborn twins), lived in a house built by Zubeidi for his two brothers, who are now in Israeli prison.
The Associated Press reported that "The new Freedom Theater drew criticism and vandalism from some Palestinians who were suspicious of Mer Khamis, an Israeli citizen, and who appeared to see the theater as a threat to their traditions. 'We lack a culture of criticism. We lack a culture of free thinking', Mer Khamis told The Associated Press in 2009, when his company put on a production of 'Animal Farm'. 'One of our roles is to challenge this', he said". This article can be read in full here.
But, the Daily Star newspaper, published in Beirut, published a story which said "Zakaria Zubeidi, a former top militant who was close to Mer-Khamis and a supporter of the theater, telling reporters he believed the shooting was a professional 'hit'. 'The people behind this murder either belong to a powerful organization or a state', he told reporters. 'This cannot be the work of people who were angry with Juliano or with the theater'." This article can be read in full here.
The Jerusalem Post later reported here that Zubeidi, who addressed the funeral in a phone call over Udi Aloni's mobile telephone, amplified by the portable public address system, told the mourners that "he would find the murderers, and vowed that they would be shown no mercy".
The JPost story quoted Israeli director Avi Nesher, as saying that Juliano "felt very close to his Jewish part and very close to his Arab part. He represented everything beautiful and terrible about this country; he served in the IDF but was also friends with the toughest terrorist in Jenin (Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade Jenin commander Zakariya Zubeida), he made the journey from side to side and didnīt belong to any one side alone. His story is the story of this place ... His role was to be a provocateur, to cause people to think whether or not there really is that big a difference between the two peoples... His legacy is to show us that there isnīt that big a difference between the two peoples, and this is the most dangerous thing to say here".
The film Juliano did about his mother's work with children in Jenin, entitled Arna's Children -- part of which showed vintage footage of young children in Jenin describing the destruction of their homes, and then participating in theater workshops, before reporting on their later militancy and deaths during the second Intifada -- is posted on Youtube here, or in nine parts, starting here.
Juliano's mother, Arna [Orna] Mer, was a Jewish woman born in Rosh Pina now in Israel's Galilee, who apparently fought in the Palmach for Israel's independence, then married a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, Juliano's father. They were both members of the Communist party, which was the only political grouping at the time to have both Jewish and Arab members. In 1989, during the first Palestinian Intifada, Juliano's mother Arna went to Jenin (not far from Nazareth, though the "border" has now become very difficult to cross) to set up a theater company and work with traumatized Palestinian children. Her theatre was destroed during the second Palestinian Intifada that broke out in late September 2000. The IDF invaded Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002, looking for suicide bombers. Arna died of cancer. Julian -- who fulfilled his obligatory Israeli military service and served with the IDF paratroopers -- followed in his mother's footsteps, moving to the Jenin Refugee Camp during the second Intifada, and rebuilding the Freedom Theatre in 2006...
Juliano's funeral was not religious -- it was political. Two Palestinian flags were held aloft on poles in that Jewish cemetery (there were no Israeli flags displayed), and lots of speeches (mostly in Arabic) vowing to continue the struggle for freedom, and against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. But, Israeli police were at all the road intersections and at the cemetery. One or two Border Police and military vehicles could also be seen parked by the side of the road along the route to the kibbutz.
Julie, pregnant, was restrained at the funeral, tense, in a private world of grief. She sobbed only when she saw the open grave, and then again when the men who had born Juliano's coffin, covered in maroon-brown taffeta fabric, lowered it into the grave, then began to empty pails of just-excavated red sandy earth back into the ground on top of the casket.
It was a frenzy of motion, three men moving in non-stop synch on each side, and of noise: the thuds of the earth hitting the coffin. Flies -- where did they come from -- suddenly were everywhere, on everyone near the gravesite.
Then, wreaths of flowers with inscriptioned ribbons, and bouquets in transparent cellophane paper, piled on top.
Tears streamed down mourners' cheeks. A few young women and men from Jenin -- yes, the Israeli military allowed 25 of Juliano's students enter Israel to attend the funeral, though a request had been submitted for 50 -- burst into cries of grief, and clung to one another. But it was all restrained, held within limits... there were no wild frenzies. That would have been too much of an imposition.
There was heavy grief in the air.
On Wednesday morning, Juliano's body had lain in the Al-Midan Theater in Haifa, where friends and family came to pay their respects.
Then -- in an astonishing development -- it was driven in a funeral procession down to the northernmost Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, and allowed to cross through without hindrance of any kind, taken to a gas station parking lot (according to journalist colleagues who were there and witnessed the whole scene), where it was greeted with cries of "Allahu Akbar" and carried around.
Then, the coffin was put back into a red van, and the funeral procession turned around and went back through the Israeli military checkpoint without any hassle or hindrance, accompanied by cars and a bus carrying the 25 Palestinian theater students. They passed into Israel and drove the relatively short distance (about 40 minutes or so) to the cemetary at Ramot Menashe.
Then the speeches... in Arabic, mostly, then translated into Hebrew and sometimes into English, in considerate acknowledgment of the presence of the others.
Then, there was spontaneous applause that grew, and lasted a long time, and then became rhythmic, like a curtain call for an encore...
It was, in fact, a standing ovation for the man and the work he was doing before he was cut down.
It was ended only when one of the women from Jenin broke into song. Then, there was spontaneous group singing of two songs in Arabic, then a tune on a harmonica.
Finally, people started to leave, chatting together quietly while greeting each other and walking out of that beautiful place where that beautiful man was laid to rest on that beautiful day.
But now, who else can do now what Juliano was doing in Jenin?
In a 2004 interview with Middle East Broadcast Network, Juliano said: "Our identity as Palestinians has been [deliberately] targetted, not only cultural centers, the villages and the electricity -- the identity. Israelis knew to make us live on our knees, seiged in these walls, they have to bring us into the tribe period of our existence, so we could not mobilize ourselves for a different kind of resistance, so we could not resist at all to this kind of solution that Israel is now -- which Mr. Bush and this Maryland conference is trying to impose -- showing, themselves, again, how they care, and how much they want peace. But the Israeli peace that will be discussed in this conference is the peace that I am now putting on the table: keeping the Palestinians on their knees, sieged behind gates, dealing with getting water and surviving the daily life, like animals". ..
The interviewer -- shifting, clearly uncomfortable, as Palestinians are, with the reality of living on their knees, like animals -- tries to change the topic, and asks about boycott and divestment as a strategy.
But, Juliano won't be diverted.
He stands firm, and continues: "Before I answer this question, allow me just to say one more thing, which I think is very important today [to say] as honest people. We. must. not. take. out. the. responsibility. of the Palestinians. We are responsible also for the destruction of Palestine ... We played, we were the partners for this destruction. Mr. Arafat during 8 years of Olso was busy selling the Oslo agreements with color TVs and DVD players, instead of creating cultural youth centers, putting people into perspectives, teaching ideology, tactics, Where? Why? No, 8 years of Oslo, and people were busy selling their agreements so they can ride in nice beautiful cars and make money while giving this opium of technology to the people ... and too "busy making money".
That's why, Juliano says -- speaking exactly like an Israeli -- when the (second) Intifada broke out, the Palestinian were caught with their pants down. and "they didn't know what to do even, how to react to this planned reaction of the Israelis".
He also said, "The biggest problem we Palestinians and we Arabs face, along our history, is that we are collaborators -- For some reason, we like to sell each other. In Palestine, people sell their brothers for a phone card ... I legally cross to Jenin because I am half Jewish [yes, he does say that here]... When the soldier hears my Hebrew, he opens up his heart ... so I am privileged, because I am a Jew, I'm coming from a known Zionist family. My grandfather (from my mother's side) was a very big figure, he was a professor, he healed the malaria in the Galilee, where my grandfather from my father's side was expelled in 1948"... So I have one grandfather coming to Palestine, kicking out my other grandfather, taking his place ... my father's family was spread all over, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, in '48"...
"I want to say to your audience that we have to acknowledge the destruction, the defeat of the Arab world, of the Palestinian people. We have to acknowledge the reasons for this defeat. Blaming the war crimes, or the crimes against humanity that Israel is practicing on daily life, is not enough. We have been sold by our leaders. Our leaders our selling our nations, including Abu [sic - he clearly meant Mahmoud] Abbas and Mr. Arafat ... We have to start to look into ourselves: what happened there".
In the interview Julian makes a call for support for his Freedom Theatre, via its website at www.thefreedomtheatre.org, here, spelled, as Juliano noted, the English way. He asked for "support for the rebuilding of our our identity"...
*************************
Why was Juliano Mer Khamis angry (as the Israeli press has apparently reported)?
He had good reasons to be.
A good insight into his reasons can be found in these excepts from a just-published interview [which was made in the USA in 2006] with the late Juliano Mer-Khamis, by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, which was published here in The Electronic Intifada on 5 April 2011:
Maryam Monalist Gharavi: How long was Arna's Children banned in Israel?
Juliano Mer-Khamis: It was not really banned. It was silenced. Journalists who wanted to write about the film could not get through the editorial decisions. There were two TV programs made about the film and cancelled at the last moment. We could not find a distributor in Israel for the film or cinemas to screen it...
Question:In the scene of your mother's body at the mortuary, you comment somewhat half-heartedly that the only place that would bury her was the kibbutz. What happened after she died?
Juliano: My mother could not be buried because she refused to be buried in a religious ceremony or funeral. Israel is not a democracy; it's a theocracy. The religion is not separated from the state so all issues concerning the privacy of life -- marriage, burial and many other aspects -- are controlled by the religious authorities, so you cannot be buried in a civilian funeral. The only way to do it is buy a piece of land in some kibbutzim, which refused to sell us a piece of land because of the politics of my mother. It's not a very popular thing in a civilian, non-religious way. And then I had to take the coffin home. And it stayed in my house for three days and I could not find a place to bury her. So I announced in a press conference that she was going to be buried in the garden of my house. There was a big scandal, police came, a lot of TV and media [came], violent warnings were issued against me. There were big demonstrations around the house, till I got a phone call from friends from a kibbutz, Ramot Menashe, who are from the left side of the map, and they came from Argentina. Nice Zionist Israelis, maybe post-Zionist. They offered a piece of land there. And the funny thing is that while we were looking for a place to bury my mother, there were discussions in Jenin to offer me to bring her for burial there, in the shahid's [martyr's] graveyard. They told me there was one Fatah leader, who was humorously saying, "Well, guys, look, it's an honor to have Arna with us here, a great honor, the only thing is maybe in about fifty years' time some Jewish archaeologists will come here and say there are some Jewish bones here and they're going to confiscate the land of Jenin" [Laughs]
What we were doing in the theatre is not trying to be a replacement or an alternative to the resistance of the Palestinians in the struggle for liberation. Just the opposite. This must be clear. I know it's not good for fundraising, because I'm not a social worker, I'm not a good Jew going to help the Arabs, and I'm not a philanthropic Palestinian who comes to feed the poor. We are joining, by all means, the struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people, which is our liberation struggle.
But just to clarify the theatre [question], joining the Palestinian intifada, by our definition: we believe that the strongest struggle today should be cultural, moral. This must be clear. We are not teaching the boys and the girls how to use arms or how to create explosives, but we expose them to discourse of liberation, of liberty. We expose them to art, culture, music -- which I believe can create better people for the future, and I hope that some of them, some of our friends in Jenin, will lead ... and continue the resistance against the occupation through this project, through this theatre.
All I care about is resistance. I'm not doing art for the sake of art. I don't believe in art for the sake of art. I think art can generate and motivate and combine and create a universal, liberated discourse. This is my concern about art. On the other side there is the therapeutic level, and the therapeutic level is not to heal. This is very important if you can point it out -- it's not to heal anybody from his violence. It's to create an awareness they can use in the right way. Not against themselves.
Question: You served in the Israeli army but quit after you were asked to stop your father's Palestinian relatives at a military checkpoint. How significant was that event as a turning point in your political and even artistic formation?
Juliano: It was the straw that broke the camel's back. But I was boiling since I tried to disguise myself. The outfit could not fit, you see? I could not fit the outfit. And it blew up in my face that certain day in the checkpoint, but I was boiling for years"...
***********************
A second, short video clip is posted on Youtube, containing an excerpt from an interview Juliano apparently gave to Israel's Channel 10 TV -- and it's important to put this in context. For, what he's doing here is playing up to the Israeli world-view. This excerpt is an aside, in English, apparently so his Finnish partner, Julie, sitting beside him and bouncing up and down in her chair in reaction, would understand. And, here, Juliano is an Israeli joking to an Israeli audience [thanks and h/t to @kosmoSFL via Twitter], who wrote: "Juliano Mer-Khamis predicts his own death. Chilling. Here":
The transcript is mine: Switching from Hebrew to English in an interview with Israel Channel 10 to explain to Julie, sitting beside him and laughing at his antics: "I'm telling them how I'm gonna end my life ... A bullet from a very f**ked-up Palestinian who's gonna be very angry that we're in Jenin with this blond coming to corrupt the youth of the Islam and he's gonna 'tshew, tshew, tshew' (Juliano acts out the sound of a high-tech gun), and she's [reference is to Julie] gonna find me dead on the doorstep"...(both are laughing)
***********************
And, posted on Youtube by Palestine for Dummies, is a more recent interview with Juliano in the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp in December 2010:
In this interview, Juliano says: "The Freedom Theatre is a space, place, where people can think freely, where people can test their thoughts and their desires and their dreams, a place that people can be equal in sex, equal in rights, a place that people can cooperate. Look, a theater is a place where you, uh, where you can dream. And we, here, we don't dream anymore. Even the small kids -- the maximum dream is about death. We lost directions, we lost the dream, of a free society, of culture. You know, Palestine ... This is not Palestine -- this is the footsteps of the dust from the dream of Palestine.
I mean, We lost the Intifada, we lost the public opinion, we fucked up, because we were not clever enough. We were (en)raged, angry, frustrated, desperate. You can't create a resistance with desperation ... With desperation you create suicide bombers, and this is what we did ..but this is what we did because we were so angry, so hurt, so destroyed that the only thing we could do is to blow ourselves [up], in Tel Aviv. Now once we learned that this will create just the opposite, we might start a new kind of resistance. And we are trying, in this camp, between the occupation and the new authority, the Palestinian, to create a third dimension or a third alternative, but it's not so easy...
Children love us, young people love us, but after 35 (years old) they hate us. So we have big conflicts with the society around, with the PA -- the Palestinian Authority -- we have big conflicts with the parents, with the teachers. I mean, now we are going to do our next scandal, which is Alice in Wonderland, but our Alice is not a stupid girl who finds out that there is a caterpillar. Our Alice is going to rebel -- against tradition, religion, schools, papa and mama -- she's gonna say, 'Give me a break guys, I have my own way'. [Juliano then pretends he's been burnt by a flame, and whispers well, theatrically, after all:] Whew, that's very dangerous"...
It's more than just a word. For Palestinians, today, it is the goal.
It was also the life work of Juliano Mer Khamis, legendary Israeli Palestinian actor and director and activist.
And, it is no exaggeration to say he died for it.
Before he was gunned down on April 4 in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, outside his Freedom Theatre, the Nazareth-born Israeli actor and producer lived for most of the last decade in the Jenin Refugee Camp. He also kept a home in Israel's northern port city of Haifa.
He was shot by five bullets, in what was described as a professional assassination. No one has so far been arrested or charged with his murder. And no motive has been determined.
Juliano was the founder and Director of the Freedom Theatre, alongside amnestied former Al-Aqsa brigades Zakaria Zubeidi (who eapparently joined the Freedom Theatre in order to protect it).
Who else has been assassinated by five bullets? Naim Khader, for example, the former PLO representative to the European Commission in Brussels, shot down outside his house one morning in the spring of 1981. Five bullets, in those days, was iconic... of a whole list of Palestinian assassinations, blamed depending on politics alternatively or simultaneously on renegade Palestinian mercenary Abu Nidal, or on the Israeli Mossad, for which no one has ever been brought to justice.]
Juliano explained his goals in this video:
"This place never had a theater ... Don't let this view deceive you. We are sitting in the midst of the most attacked and poor refugee camp in Palestine, the refugee camp of Jenin"...
"We are talking about almost 3,000 children under the age of 15 suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It means they pee in their pants when they're 11, it means they cannot concentrate, they cannot deal with each other without violence ... This camp, and look around, is sieged by electric fence all around it, people cannot go out, or in, unless they have a permit. We have two gates, like a big prison, and we are in the midst, trying to serve this population, trying to bring some normality, some sanity, to some people here" ...
UPDATE: In a longer version of the film, posted by Yusef Munayyer here. Juliano says "Our duty, as artists, is to rebuild this destruction".
Juliano was buried two days later, on 6 April in Kibbutz Ramot Menashe -- in sudden sunshine after days of rain, on a plateau at the top of a hill in the Galilee region of Israel.
The funeral was completely secular -- there was no religious figure officiating, there were no religious symbols or references, and there were no prayers -- but it was in a Jewish cemetery, where Juliano was buried near his mother, Arna (Orna) Mer. who was described in an article published on Israel's YNet website tonight as a "relentless idealist".
His father, a Christian Arab, Saliba Khamis -- described in the same article as an "intellectual" - is buried in a cemetery in Haifa.
The YNet article, posted here, noted that "Nothing was ever conventional in the lives of the Mer-Khamis brothers, from their dual identity to their unique names".
Juliano once said in an interview -- and this has been widely quoted since his assassination -- that he was "100 percent Jewish, and 100 percent Palestinian".
In the funeral, Israeli film director Udi Aloni, who had agreed to work with Juliano in the Freedom Theatre, remembered Juliano's words: "I am from here, and I am who I am".
Arna founded the Freedom Theater in Jenin Refugee Camp in 1988-1989 during the first Palestinian Intifada [though she apparently called it the Stone Theatre] -- throwing stones remains one of the symbols of the first Palestinian Intifada. Her theatre was destroyed, years after her death from cancer, during the second Palestinian Intifada, in the Spring 2002 Israeli invasion of the Jenin Refugee Camp to eradicate suicide bomb cells who had prepared bombs and sent Palestinians to make attacks in Israeli cities. Juliano, who had previously worked with his mother, re-built it as the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp in 2006.
Former al-Aqsa Brigades fighter Zakaria Zubeidi (who was also a former theater student of Arna's) was a co-director of Juliano's Freedom Theatre, apparently in part because of the political protection Zubeidi could provide in a tense and tumultuous environment.
Juliano and his young partner, Julie, who is Finnish and the mother of his younger children (including as-yet-unborn twins), lived in a house built by Zubeidi for his two brothers, who are now in Israeli prison.
The Associated Press reported that "The new Freedom Theater drew criticism and vandalism from some Palestinians who were suspicious of Mer Khamis, an Israeli citizen, and who appeared to see the theater as a threat to their traditions. 'We lack a culture of criticism. We lack a culture of free thinking', Mer Khamis told The Associated Press in 2009, when his company put on a production of 'Animal Farm'. 'One of our roles is to challenge this', he said". This article can be read in full here.
But, the Daily Star newspaper, published in Beirut, published a story which said "Zakaria Zubeidi, a former top militant who was close to Mer-Khamis and a supporter of the theater, telling reporters he believed the shooting was a professional 'hit'. 'The people behind this murder either belong to a powerful organization or a state', he told reporters. 'This cannot be the work of people who were angry with Juliano or with the theater'." This article can be read in full here.
The Jerusalem Post later reported here that Zubeidi, who addressed the funeral in a phone call over Udi Aloni's mobile telephone, amplified by the portable public address system, told the mourners that "he would find the murderers, and vowed that they would be shown no mercy".
The JPost story quoted Israeli director Avi Nesher, as saying that Juliano "felt very close to his Jewish part and very close to his Arab part. He represented everything beautiful and terrible about this country; he served in the IDF but was also friends with the toughest terrorist in Jenin (Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade Jenin commander Zakariya Zubeida), he made the journey from side to side and didnīt belong to any one side alone. His story is the story of this place ... His role was to be a provocateur, to cause people to think whether or not there really is that big a difference between the two peoples... His legacy is to show us that there isnīt that big a difference between the two peoples, and this is the most dangerous thing to say here".
The film Juliano did about his mother's work with children in Jenin, entitled Arna's Children -- part of which showed vintage footage of young children in Jenin describing the destruction of their homes, and then participating in theater workshops, before reporting on their later militancy and deaths during the second Intifada -- is posted on Youtube here, or in nine parts, starting here.
Juliano's mother, Arna [Orna] Mer, was a Jewish woman born in Rosh Pina now in Israel's Galilee, who apparently fought in the Palmach for Israel's independence, then married a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, Juliano's father. They were both members of the Communist party, which was the only political grouping at the time to have both Jewish and Arab members. In 1989, during the first Palestinian Intifada, Juliano's mother Arna went to Jenin (not far from Nazareth, though the "border" has now become very difficult to cross) to set up a theater company and work with traumatized Palestinian children. Her theatre was destroed during the second Palestinian Intifada that broke out in late September 2000. The IDF invaded Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002, looking for suicide bombers. Arna died of cancer. Julian -- who fulfilled his obligatory Israeli military service and served with the IDF paratroopers -- followed in his mother's footsteps, moving to the Jenin Refugee Camp during the second Intifada, and rebuilding the Freedom Theatre in 2006...
Juliano's funeral was not religious -- it was political. Two Palestinian flags were held aloft on poles in that Jewish cemetery (there were no Israeli flags displayed), and lots of speeches (mostly in Arabic) vowing to continue the struggle for freedom, and against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. But, Israeli police were at all the road intersections and at the cemetery. One or two Border Police and military vehicles could also be seen parked by the side of the road along the route to the kibbutz.
Julie, pregnant, was restrained at the funeral, tense, in a private world of grief. She sobbed only when she saw the open grave, and then again when the men who had born Juliano's coffin, covered in maroon-brown taffeta fabric, lowered it into the grave, then began to empty pails of just-excavated red sandy earth back into the ground on top of the casket.
It was a frenzy of motion, three men moving in non-stop synch on each side, and of noise: the thuds of the earth hitting the coffin. Flies -- where did they come from -- suddenly were everywhere, on everyone near the gravesite.
Then, wreaths of flowers with inscriptioned ribbons, and bouquets in transparent cellophane paper, piled on top.
Tears streamed down mourners' cheeks. A few young women and men from Jenin -- yes, the Israeli military allowed 25 of Juliano's students enter Israel to attend the funeral, though a request had been submitted for 50 -- burst into cries of grief, and clung to one another. But it was all restrained, held within limits... there were no wild frenzies. That would have been too much of an imposition.
There was heavy grief in the air.
On Wednesday morning, Juliano's body had lain in the Al-Midan Theater in Haifa, where friends and family came to pay their respects.
Then -- in an astonishing development -- it was driven in a funeral procession down to the northernmost Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, and allowed to cross through without hindrance of any kind, taken to a gas station parking lot (according to journalist colleagues who were there and witnessed the whole scene), where it was greeted with cries of "Allahu Akbar" and carried around.
Then, the coffin was put back into a red van, and the funeral procession turned around and went back through the Israeli military checkpoint without any hassle or hindrance, accompanied by cars and a bus carrying the 25 Palestinian theater students. They passed into Israel and drove the relatively short distance (about 40 minutes or so) to the cemetary at Ramot Menashe.
Then the speeches... in Arabic, mostly, then translated into Hebrew and sometimes into English, in considerate acknowledgment of the presence of the others.
Then, there was spontaneous applause that grew, and lasted a long time, and then became rhythmic, like a curtain call for an encore...
It was, in fact, a standing ovation for the man and the work he was doing before he was cut down.
It was ended only when one of the women from Jenin broke into song. Then, there was spontaneous group singing of two songs in Arabic, then a tune on a harmonica.
Finally, people started to leave, chatting together quietly while greeting each other and walking out of that beautiful place where that beautiful man was laid to rest on that beautiful day.
But now, who else can do now what Juliano was doing in Jenin?
In a 2004 interview with Middle East Broadcast Network, Juliano said: "Our identity as Palestinians has been [deliberately] targetted, not only cultural centers, the villages and the electricity -- the identity. Israelis knew to make us live on our knees, seiged in these walls, they have to bring us into the tribe period of our existence, so we could not mobilize ourselves for a different kind of resistance, so we could not resist at all to this kind of solution that Israel is now -- which Mr. Bush and this Maryland conference is trying to impose -- showing, themselves, again, how they care, and how much they want peace. But the Israeli peace that will be discussed in this conference is the peace that I am now putting on the table: keeping the Palestinians on their knees, sieged behind gates, dealing with getting water and surviving the daily life, like animals". ..
The interviewer -- shifting, clearly uncomfortable, as Palestinians are, with the reality of living on their knees, like animals -- tries to change the topic, and asks about boycott and divestment as a strategy.
But, Juliano won't be diverted.
He stands firm, and continues: "Before I answer this question, allow me just to say one more thing, which I think is very important today [to say] as honest people. We. must. not. take. out. the. responsibility. of the Palestinians. We are responsible also for the destruction of Palestine ... We played, we were the partners for this destruction. Mr. Arafat during 8 years of Olso was busy selling the Oslo agreements with color TVs and DVD players, instead of creating cultural youth centers, putting people into perspectives, teaching ideology, tactics, Where? Why? No, 8 years of Oslo, and people were busy selling their agreements so they can ride in nice beautiful cars and make money while giving this opium of technology to the people ... and too "busy making money".
That's why, Juliano says -- speaking exactly like an Israeli -- when the (second) Intifada broke out, the Palestinian were caught with their pants down. and "they didn't know what to do even, how to react to this planned reaction of the Israelis".
He also said, "The biggest problem we Palestinians and we Arabs face, along our history, is that we are collaborators -- For some reason, we like to sell each other. In Palestine, people sell their brothers for a phone card ... I legally cross to Jenin because I am half Jewish [yes, he does say that here]... When the soldier hears my Hebrew, he opens up his heart ... so I am privileged, because I am a Jew, I'm coming from a known Zionist family. My grandfather (from my mother's side) was a very big figure, he was a professor, he healed the malaria in the Galilee, where my grandfather from my father's side was expelled in 1948"... So I have one grandfather coming to Palestine, kicking out my other grandfather, taking his place ... my father's family was spread all over, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, in '48"...
"I want to say to your audience that we have to acknowledge the destruction, the defeat of the Arab world, of the Palestinian people. We have to acknowledge the reasons for this defeat. Blaming the war crimes, or the crimes against humanity that Israel is practicing on daily life, is not enough. We have been sold by our leaders. Our leaders our selling our nations, including Abu [sic - he clearly meant Mahmoud] Abbas and Mr. Arafat ... We have to start to look into ourselves: what happened there".
In the interview Julian makes a call for support for his Freedom Theatre, via its website at www.thefreedomtheatre.org, here, spelled, as Juliano noted, the English way. He asked for "support for the rebuilding of our our identity"...
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Why was Juliano Mer Khamis angry (as the Israeli press has apparently reported)?
He had good reasons to be.
A good insight into his reasons can be found in these excepts from a just-published interview [which was made in the USA in 2006] with the late Juliano Mer-Khamis, by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, which was published here in The Electronic Intifada on 5 April 2011:
Maryam Monalist Gharavi: How long was Arna's Children banned in Israel?
Juliano Mer-Khamis: It was not really banned. It was silenced. Journalists who wanted to write about the film could not get through the editorial decisions. There were two TV programs made about the film and cancelled at the last moment. We could not find a distributor in Israel for the film or cinemas to screen it...
Question:In the scene of your mother's body at the mortuary, you comment somewhat half-heartedly that the only place that would bury her was the kibbutz. What happened after she died?
Juliano: My mother could not be buried because she refused to be buried in a religious ceremony or funeral. Israel is not a democracy; it's a theocracy. The religion is not separated from the state so all issues concerning the privacy of life -- marriage, burial and many other aspects -- are controlled by the religious authorities, so you cannot be buried in a civilian funeral. The only way to do it is buy a piece of land in some kibbutzim, which refused to sell us a piece of land because of the politics of my mother. It's not a very popular thing in a civilian, non-religious way. And then I had to take the coffin home. And it stayed in my house for three days and I could not find a place to bury her. So I announced in a press conference that she was going to be buried in the garden of my house. There was a big scandal, police came, a lot of TV and media [came], violent warnings were issued against me. There were big demonstrations around the house, till I got a phone call from friends from a kibbutz, Ramot Menashe, who are from the left side of the map, and they came from Argentina. Nice Zionist Israelis, maybe post-Zionist. They offered a piece of land there. And the funny thing is that while we were looking for a place to bury my mother, there were discussions in Jenin to offer me to bring her for burial there, in the shahid's [martyr's] graveyard. They told me there was one Fatah leader, who was humorously saying, "Well, guys, look, it's an honor to have Arna with us here, a great honor, the only thing is maybe in about fifty years' time some Jewish archaeologists will come here and say there are some Jewish bones here and they're going to confiscate the land of Jenin" [Laughs]
What we were doing in the theatre is not trying to be a replacement or an alternative to the resistance of the Palestinians in the struggle for liberation. Just the opposite. This must be clear. I know it's not good for fundraising, because I'm not a social worker, I'm not a good Jew going to help the Arabs, and I'm not a philanthropic Palestinian who comes to feed the poor. We are joining, by all means, the struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people, which is our liberation struggle.
But just to clarify the theatre [question], joining the Palestinian intifada, by our definition: we believe that the strongest struggle today should be cultural, moral. This must be clear. We are not teaching the boys and the girls how to use arms or how to create explosives, but we expose them to discourse of liberation, of liberty. We expose them to art, culture, music -- which I believe can create better people for the future, and I hope that some of them, some of our friends in Jenin, will lead ... and continue the resistance against the occupation through this project, through this theatre.
All I care about is resistance. I'm not doing art for the sake of art. I don't believe in art for the sake of art. I think art can generate and motivate and combine and create a universal, liberated discourse. This is my concern about art. On the other side there is the therapeutic level, and the therapeutic level is not to heal. This is very important if you can point it out -- it's not to heal anybody from his violence. It's to create an awareness they can use in the right way. Not against themselves.
Question: You served in the Israeli army but quit after you were asked to stop your father's Palestinian relatives at a military checkpoint. How significant was that event as a turning point in your political and even artistic formation?
Juliano: It was the straw that broke the camel's back. But I was boiling since I tried to disguise myself. The outfit could not fit, you see? I could not fit the outfit. And it blew up in my face that certain day in the checkpoint, but I was boiling for years"...
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A second, short video clip is posted on Youtube, containing an excerpt from an interview Juliano apparently gave to Israel's Channel 10 TV -- and it's important to put this in context. For, what he's doing here is playing up to the Israeli world-view. This excerpt is an aside, in English, apparently so his Finnish partner, Julie, sitting beside him and bouncing up and down in her chair in reaction, would understand. And, here, Juliano is an Israeli joking to an Israeli audience [thanks and h/t to @kosmoSFL via Twitter], who wrote: "Juliano Mer-Khamis predicts his own death. Chilling. Here":
The transcript is mine: Switching from Hebrew to English in an interview with Israel Channel 10 to explain to Julie, sitting beside him and laughing at his antics: "I'm telling them how I'm gonna end my life ... A bullet from a very f**ked-up Palestinian who's gonna be very angry that we're in Jenin with this blond coming to corrupt the youth of the Islam and he's gonna 'tshew, tshew, tshew' (Juliano acts out the sound of a high-tech gun), and she's [reference is to Julie] gonna find me dead on the doorstep"...(both are laughing)
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And, posted on Youtube by Palestine for Dummies, is a more recent interview with Juliano in the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp in December 2010:
In this interview, Juliano says: "The Freedom Theatre is a space, place, where people can think freely, where people can test their thoughts and their desires and their dreams, a place that people can be equal in sex, equal in rights, a place that people can cooperate. Look, a theater is a place where you, uh, where you can dream. And we, here, we don't dream anymore. Even the small kids -- the maximum dream is about death. We lost directions, we lost the dream, of a free society, of culture. You know, Palestine ... This is not Palestine -- this is the footsteps of the dust from the dream of Palestine.
I mean, We lost the Intifada, we lost the public opinion, we fucked up, because we were not clever enough. We were (en)raged, angry, frustrated, desperate. You can't create a resistance with desperation ... With desperation you create suicide bombers, and this is what we did ..but this is what we did because we were so angry, so hurt, so destroyed that the only thing we could do is to blow ourselves [up], in Tel Aviv. Now once we learned that this will create just the opposite, we might start a new kind of resistance. And we are trying, in this camp, between the occupation and the new authority, the Palestinian, to create a third dimension or a third alternative, but it's not so easy...
Children love us, young people love us, but after 35 (years old) they hate us. So we have big conflicts with the society around, with the PA -- the Palestinian Authority -- we have big conflicts with the parents, with the teachers. I mean, now we are going to do our next scandal, which is Alice in Wonderland, but our Alice is not a stupid girl who finds out that there is a caterpillar. Our Alice is going to rebel -- against tradition, religion, schools, papa and mama -- she's gonna say, 'Give me a break guys, I have my own way'. [Juliano then pretends he's been burnt by a flame, and whispers well, theatrically, after all:] Whew, that's very dangerous"...
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