In these days of deep morning — and there is so much to mourn here these days — here are two interviews with Juliano Mer Khamis, assassinated last Tuesday in Jenin refugee camp, buried last Thursday on a hilltop plateau in the Israeli Galilee, next to his mother in Ramot Menashe.
The first was done in the U.S by the Detroit-based Mideast Broadcast Network, MBN [Youtube posting caption: Jenin Freedom Theater director Juliano Mer-Khamis interviewed by Detroit Palestinian activist, Hasan Newash on MBN-TV – Mideast Broadcasting Network – April 4, 2005] – h/t and thanks to @imuthaffar via Twitter:
It’s interesting — you here how much he sounds like an Israeli — from his way of speaking English, the deeper and full baritone pitch of his voice, to many of his expressions, his ways of thinking.
As a Palestinian he sounds like … a Palestinian from here, from inside, who didn’t really know what it was like to be a a refugee living in very precarious and dangerous exile, who has no idea of the trauma experienced by (and also created by) the PLO in its years “outside”. “At least 150,000 Palestinians were dropped on us from Tunis … they were busy making money…”
Not totally fair — he blames these people for not preparing the Palestinians for the Israeli crack-down and reinvasion of Palestinian cities after the outbreak of the second Intifada (with snipers firing with rifles whose range could not reach the target from the edge of Bethlehem to the Israeli settlement of Gilo, and with Palestinian suicide-bombing attacks in Israeli cities)… The Tunis crowd believed that the Oslo Accords would succeed, would have to succeed, that there was no other choice — though they didn’t argue this very well. And no one ever predicted what was to follow… Though it is true that no preparations were made for such an eventuality.
In it, Juliano explains: “I tried both sides, first I went to the Jewish side, denying my Arab side, then I went to the Arab side, denying my Jewish side. Now I live with both sides in peace and harmony … We went a few friends to the Jenin refugee camp, and now we are rebuilding my mother’s project that was destroyed by the Israelis in 2002, in the big invasion”…
He also says, in answer to the question of why he thinks the Freedom Theatre is an important project: “Now because I think we are facing the end of the destruction of the Palestinian people by the Israeli forces — we are in a situation today where not only the political and the economical infrastructure was destroyed — Israel is destroying the neurological system of the society, which is culture, identity, communication. we thought that by creating a project which will deal with arts — with cinema, theatre multimedia, computers, websites — is the best way to fight this deconstruction of identity of the Palestinians which is deliberately done for the last year(s) by the Israelis. I think Israel is pushing back the Palestinian people into the Stone Age”…
“We are dealing with a traumatized society, a society that is living under siege, heavy siege .. . not only Jenin but the whole West Bank is cut into pieces, with gates and fences, it’s like becoming like a big prison in its concept, with the Israelis living outside the fence but raiding it whenever they want … We coming from the outside, we are very privileged people … we are not coming from these circumstances, we are more motivated, and we are facing a very deep depression, a very deep desperation, a very deep apathy which is the most natural reaction to this chaotic situation. We find it hard to motivate people today in Palestine … People lost hope … It’s dark, no hope, in Palestine … We cannot bring hope, you can’t bring hope in a sack or a package … but we can create the grounds … this is our task today … The eldest generation is a lost case, I think becuse they have seen so much destruction and death, most of them, they don’t reject, but they don’t support, they are apathetic. The new generation, hopefully, we can create the grounds … to build up a hope, resistance, the new identity, to build up strategical plans, to build up thinking, to build up a concept of life, who we are, how we see ourselves living with the Israelis, which rights are we willing to give to the Jews who came to Palestine in ’48 or after, how we see our life together. Everything, everything was destroyed … Now everybody is a leader, everybody is a commander, everybody does what he does, because that’s what he wants to do … It was not typical to Palestine before the Intifada. Palestine was very unique in its intellectual venues, its modernity, in its openness, its progressive cultural activities. The Israelis succeeded to chop it, and Israel is chopping…
At about 14:00 minutes into the interview: “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”.
Another image Palestinian males simply can’t like … for them, homosexuality is only shameful if you are the submissive, receiving partner. The active is still a male, a man. And, of course, this is what the problem is with women — they, too, are viewed as only submissive, they are imagined as only passive recipients in the sexual act. The only honor in this at all, for women, is to do it “legally” (after strong negotiations, payment, and public acknowledgement) and then to seduce her man enough to create new life (even this is still somehow seen as passive) to create the heirs, the future loyalists and supporters that give strength to a family in any future financial dispute (this is by far the most important consideration) … or perhaps a political test of will …
The Arab community in the U.S. went under the table after 9/11, fearing raising their voices, supporting Palestine … When I ask for support, the response is, “Well, I would like to do it, very much, but I’m afraid I will be emigrated”.
“Are you absolving the Israelis of their responsibility?”, the interview then asks, with incredulity.
Juliano was ready: “The Israeli responsibility is obvious, is obvious, is obvious. I would see it insulting for you, or for the audience, for me to show the Israeli responsibility. The Israeli crimes are experienced daily, daily, on the Palestinian people. I do not think that we have to deal with the Israeli occupation — we as Palestinians, as Arabs today. We have to build ourselves to face this. We have to be clever enough not to let the Israelis to create this kind of propaganda and put themselves as the victims. How come Israel succeeded in seven years to turn the pyramid upside down?! Only because we are st… [n.b. – here, Juliano was about to say “stupid”, clearly, but stopped himself just in time] Why? Only because we, us, are to blame! Israel succeeded in seven years to turn itself into the victimized side.”
As the interviewer tries to tamper down his own defensiveness, asking “Where are the flaws … What did I do wrong, here in the Arab community in the States?”, Juliano replies: “You were busy, I think, making money, maybe … [Then, trying to be nice:I’m ] Not you personally, I mean. At least 150,000 Palestinians were brought and dropped on us from Tunis. They were busy making money, not teaching my children what would happen when I will be attacked with this big war machine by the Israelis, and they’re gonna put this mask on my face and say I was genetically born terrorist, and I want to look for the virgin in the sky, this is why I want to kill Jews. What am I gonna do with this? Am I going to go and blow up buses in Tel Aviv? Or I’m gonna fight it with poetry, theater? Or I’m gonna penetrate the Israeli propaganda, I’m gonna be tactical enough, strategetic enough, to know what I’m doing with your public opinion in the U.S. [But] Nothing was done!!!”
“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] Abbas and Mr. Arafat … We have to start to look into ourselves: what happened there”.
“To make this happen, to give us, the Palestinians, the tools for this new research, or to this new building up of our identity amd our nation, means supporting first, practically, the Freedom Theatre and Ibdaa Center and al-Hakawati and al-Kasaba theaters… supporting the Palestinians in an active way, not sitting in these ritual discourses, endless discussions, and to get out of the fear. We’ve been busted by fear. The stagnation that happened after 9/11 should be over. We have to go to stand up again on our feet. We are now living on our knees”…
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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A second, short video clip is 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 fucked-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, a third more recently, posted on Youtube by Palestine for Dummies, is an 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…i
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