R.I.P: Amos Gitai Regular and Doc Filmmaker Juliano Mer-Khamis

Israeli (and Palestinian) actors, directors, and artists all mourn today the assassination of actor, director, and peace activist Juliano Mer-Khamis. Born in 1958 in the Arab city of Nazareth (North of Israel) to a Jewish mother and an Arab father, Mer-Khamis embodied in his life, as well as in his death, the division and the conflict between the two people sharing this bloody land.

Appearing in numerous films and plays, he is most known to the international crowd in his appearances in movies directed by Amos Gitai (Kippur, Yom-Yom, Kedma). Mer-Khamis was a controversial figure in the Israeli society, never stifling himself from expressing his political views, as unacceptable as they may be.

Following his mother’s footsteps, he too became a political activist, raising his voice against the occupation of Palestinians, and for human rights in Arab culture. A theater for children his late mother managed in the Palestinian city of Jenin became the subject of his first (and alas, his last) film as a documentary director. The Film, Arna’s Children, received accolades both locally and internationally, and even won the FIPRESCI Prize in the important Canadian Hot Docs Festival.

In recent years, Mer-Khamis himself managed a theater in Jenin, hoping peace will arise from within. In his life he received a lot of death-threats from both sides of the political map: from Jewish Israelis who couldn’t cope with the sympathy he felt for the other side (i.e. the enemy in their eyes), and from Palestinian extremists, who felt he is weakening the Palestinian resistance. Tonight, in his Theater of Freedom parking lot, a group of five masked men, Palestinian extremists, assassinated him, bringing the turbulent life of an actor-director-humanist to a sad and violent ending.

Juliano Mer-Khamis was just one month shy of his 53rd birthday.