Today I had the terrible job of reporting on the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis.

Juliano was an Arab-Israeli actor and director who spent the past five years offering the youth of Jenin an alternative reality. He founded and ran the Freedom Theatre, a drama school and community theatre in the middle of the Jenin refugee camp, where any child could become a part of plays, films, and art which they otherwise would never have known.

His mother Arna, an Israeli Jew, lived in Jenin throughout her life and in the 80s erected a similar venue called the Stone Theatre; it was built during the First Intifada and perished during the Second. Juliano produced a documentary about her work called Arna's Children. But I believe that Arna's son surpassed even her great efforts in developing the Freedom Theatre and placing art into the hands of children who've known only violence. That was no romantic ambition; it was a struggle, as the story of Yussef makes clear:





Today a masked man walked up to Juliano as he was leaving his home and left him with five bullets in his chest. One of Juliano's colleagues watched him die and was injured from the fire herself.


Juliano had earned his enemies while directing the Freedom Theatre. Due to his unshakable commitment to free expression and the pursuit of art and drama, he was hated by the dogmatic and literal-minded. As Haaretz note in their reports of the assassination:

After the shooting Monday, dozens of local residents gathered around the car of the man they knew as "Jule," who they said never hid his intention of exposing Palestinian children to theater and fomenting a cultural revolution.

The theater has been vandalized by Islamists repeatedly, and there have been two attempts to torch it.

Objectors were also outraged when Mer-Khamis staged the play "Animal Farm", in which the young actors played the part of a pig, which Islam considers an impure animal.

Mer Khamis said he had planned to stage The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a satire of armed resistance, but shelved the idea after someone smashed the window of his car.

This is a story that repeats, and it is easy to summarize: there are people like Juliano, who belong to the culture of resistance, and there are people like his faceless killer, who belong to the culture of death. Juliano Mer Khamis deserves respect for allowing Palestinians to discern the difference between the two.

A friend sent me the following video, which does a good job of showing what Juliano had begun to create.