Another Martyr

But this time the cause was somewhat different. A Palestinian Arab whose dedication it was, through the influence of his Israeli-Jewish mother, to teach Palestinian children to reject the societal-taught views of considering Israelis and Jews as enemies to be violently crushed. In honour of his mother who herself dedicated to her life to that very issue, Juliano Mer Khamis continued her work at the theatre co-founded by himself and his mother, Arna Mer.

At that theatre Palestinian children were exposed to theatre arts. They were also exposed to the concept of rejecting murder and terrorism. That if they had a grievance with an authority that they felt violated their rights, that they regard the alternative to violent response: non-violent activism. While Mr. Khamis worked hand-in-glove with his mother, it was as a Palestinian Arab, like his father, with no acknowledgement of his Jewish blood.

In perfect accord with his mother's decision to devote herself to the cause of the Palestinians. Although he was recognized through his professional acting in Israel as an accomplished actor, there could be little doubt that he was a Palestinian Arab through his personal decision-making that saw him accept that mantle and reject the other half of his genetic inheritance. Which did not stop Hamas from loathingly naming him a "Zionist Jew whose hands should be cut off."

For in dedicating himself to encouraging young Palestinians to think of active resistance to an occupying force by rejecting violence, he was deliberately undermining the teaching of Hamas which encourages 'martyrdom' through the odious atrocities of suicide bombings. Mr. Khamis seemed to have little interest in complicating matters by explaining to the young Palestinians he sought to influence that the one-sided view of an 'occupier' nation and a 'victim' population did not reflect reality.

He was a Palestinian of his time and his place, himself tainted by the zeitgeist of Middle East politics, as an Arab who viewed the State of Israel as an affliction upon the victimized Palestinians. The complexities of a state attempting to protect itself and its people against constant physical attacks necessitating that the state use armed methods to meet armed militias seemed of little interest to him.

He accepted the prevailing Palestinian propaganda, that Arabs suffer and Israel oppresses. But the work he was engaged in also highlighted the violence, the aggression, the anger and determination to surmount their inferior state of an occupied people by lashing out and committing mass atrocities that young Palestinians grew up with. Taught that Israelis and Jews are evil, they feared and hated them.

And high-lighted the fact that peace is constantly beyond reach because the Palestinians have learned to cherish their victimhood, preferring it to a peace settlement because viewing themselves as victims allows them to appeal to the outside world to support them against the monstrous state mechanism that grinds them into miserable poverty. An imaginary situation but one supremely satisfying to the angst-ridden Palestinians.

The myth of martyrdom for the cause, the urgent need to 'resist', a camouflage term for mayhem and murder, to avenge themselves against a tormentor that exists only in their delusional minds, mired in tribal antipathies and traditional absorption with their victim status, remains the crown jewel in the Palestinians' heritage game of blame and hatred, slander and violence.

While Hamas detested the man, he was admired and loved within Jenin where the theatre was located. The young Palestinians that he went to such great pains to imbue with a more balanced view of choices open to them, must surely have learned something of value from him. Despite which it would appear that many of the children he taught eventually assumed their destinies as armed fighters and suicide-bombing terrorists.

His arguments not to resort to violence, to think that killing your enemy is the only solution open to intelligent human beings might not have been lost on all the young people he taught, however. His interference with the carefully scripted program of Hamas and the other terror groups who invested in training future generations to take up the cudgel with their foe, was intolerable to the terrorists.

They have no intention of putting a halt to the killing, for this is what motivates and satisfies their aspirations to succeed in destroying their target. And Mr. Khamis simply became one of those targets. A martyr to his own cause.