| Juliano Mer Khamis, Israeli actor and director, was the son of Arna, a Jewish Israeli woman, founder of the theatre school in the Jenin refugee camp, and of Saliba Khamis, a Palestinian from Haifa. |
In 2006 he opened the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp, as a school of theatre for Palestinian girls and boys, as a space for expression and freedom where they could “Find a new horizon, preserve their values of liberation and not fall into the trap set by the occupation to become the mirror image of their enemy. But for this it's necessary to construct a strong identity that doesn't give way to sendiments of revenge, that is based on universal values, culture, consciousness: If someone kills your daughter, and you have the strength to not kill his daughter, you have the strength to resist and to maintain your values. Then you will be able to beat them because you are stronger as a human being”.
For Juliano, this was the real struggle against the Israeli occupation because "What occupation is doing is destroying society”. But it was also a struggle against all fundamentalism to "build on the basis not of tradition or religion, but of freedom, of democratic structures, of a high level of education, of free opinion, of culture... To combat tradition is to combat the occupation”.
This commitment to freedom, starting with children, was an annoyance to those who did not share his dream of being“the connection, a door, a window”.
On 4 April, Juliano was killed by an armed man, his face covered, who had waited at the entrance to the refugee camp.
We will keep alive his memory and his dream of freedom
