SWD 17

Juliano Mehr-Khamis, Israeli-Palestinian activist

The Situation is at-hand (Homage to Israeli-Palestinian conflict victim, Juliano Mer-Khamis, director of the Freedom Theater, Jenin; actor; documentary film director, assassinated 2011).

Ink, colored pencil, gouache.
Framed size, 25 in. H x 32 1/3 W

Mer-Khamis, an Israeli-Palestinian (his mother was Jewish Israeli; his father Christian Arab Palestinian), was murdered in spring 2011.

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Mer-Khamis was well- known and greatly respected as an actor, film-maker and director of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, in the Occupied West Bank, which brings theatre to young Palestinians who would otherwise not have the opportunity to engage in and learn about live theatre. His history includes having been an Israeli soldier in an elite division.
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On reading about him at the time I began working on the drawing I couldn’t help but reflect that while it’s assumed his assailants were Palestinians, he was viewed with equal distrust by Jewish Israeli settlers and Jewish Israeli right-wingers who viewed his work with Palestinian young people with great suspicion and distrust.  As such he could have just as easily have been murdered by Jewish Israeli extremist-terrorists.

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One interpretation of a rationale for his assassination was that the Freedom Theater had mounted a production of George Orwell’s classic book Animal Farm. In stage plays of Animal Farm, actors and actresses wear  costumes portray them as animals, including pigs. In both Jewish kashrut (aka kosher) and Muslim halaal laws governing which foods may be eaten and which foods, esp. animals and fish, are forbidden, pigs are considered unclean and not to be eaten. So the costuming of people as pigs alone could very well have been a rationale for extremists to seek the death of Mer-Khamis.

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His son, then age 5, was in the backseat of the car in which he was driving when he was assassinated-murdered outside the Freedom Theater. Mer-Khamis was survived by his son and his wife.  

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My portrait of Mer-Khamis was drawn from was a photo of Mer-Khamis  I first saw in several  online news sites, without attribution as to the photographer. Later I saw attribution in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, to Daniel Tchethik, of Tel Aviv.

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The bird at upper right was drawn from one of a number of photos Segan took of birds in Haifa.

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The Palestinian kaffiyah (head scarf) was loaned to me by someone in Seattle. The Jewish prayer shawl I drew, which interweaves the kaffiyah, had belonged to a late Jewish American, Joel Figen, of Minneapolis and Eugene, Oregon. It was given to me by his sister after he had passed on.

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A 4 min., 17 sec video of the drawing when it was in-progress.

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A 3 min., 15 sec video of the drawing when it was in-progress.

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A link to an interview with Mer-Khamis.

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The link to the Freedom Theatre's website

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Link to the Israeli human rights website B'tselem