Juliano Mer-Khamis

In 2011 he joined the faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, Tel Aviv, where he taught acting until his assassination.

On 19 April 2011, Adnan Dameery, spokesperson for the Palestinian Security Forces, reported DNA tests had exonerated a detained suspect and that the murderer was still at large.

In a 2009 interview with Israel Army Radio, Mer-Khamis said of his background: "I am 100 percent Palestinian and 100 percent Jewish."

In an interview in 2008, Juliano had foreseen the circumstances of his murder, predicting jokingly that he would be killed by a 'fucked-up Palestinian’ for ‘corrupting the youth of Islam’. After being identified by the baby-sitter in three separate line-ups, Palestinian police charged Mujahed Qaniri, from Jenin's refugee camp, with having carried out the murder. There are varying accounts of Qamiri's affiliation: some describe him as a former member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades who defected to Hamas, but a Hamas spokesman has denied any involvement, describing this as a purely criminal incident.

Mer-Khamis was married to Jenny Nyman, a Finnish activist he met in Haifa in May 2006. They had a son, Jay, and were expecting the birth of twins at the time of his death.

In 2006, following a wave of international support which was followed by his film, Mer-Khamis opened a community theater for children and adults in Jenin, called The Freedom Theatre.

In 2006, Mer-Khamis established the Freedom Theatre along with Zakaria Zubeidi, a former military leader of the Jenin Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Jonatan Stanczak, a Swedish-Israeli activist, and Dror Feiler, a Swedish-Israeli artist. The Freedom Theatre is a community theatre that provides opportunities for the children and youth of the Jenin Refugee Camp by developing skills, self-knowledge and confidence and using the creative process as a model for social change.

He performed on stage with Beit Lessin Theater and Habima Theatre. In 2003, he produced and directed his first documentary film, Arna's Children, together with Danniel Danniel. The film is about his mother's work to establish a children's theatre group in Jenin during the 1980s. Seven years after the death of his mother, and following the battle in Jenin in 2002, Mer-Khamis returned to Jenin to meet and interview the children who participated in the theater, and found out that some became militants and were killed.

In 2002, Mer-Khamis was nominated for the Ophir award for Best Actor for his role in Kedma. One of the last films in which he appeared was the Palestinian film Salt of this Sea (2008), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

When the Al-Aqsa intifada broke out, two of his former students, Yusuf Sweitat and Nidal al-Jabali, became suicide bombers in October 2001 at Hadera. Two weeks earlier, a girl whom Sweitat had salvaged from a school classroom that had just been bombed by the IDF died as he carried her to the hospital. Hearing the news, Juliano returned to Jenin a month after the Battle of Jenin had begun. His host was a former student, Ala’a Sabbagh, then aged 22, leader of Jenin's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and he spent several months on patrol with men on Israel's hit list, and in hideouts, with Sabbagh and Zacharia Zubeidi, whose mother had been killed in April 2002 by an Israeli sniper who perhaps mistook her for her son Tata, who was also subsequently shot dead an hour later. He made a film of the period, Arna's Children, released in 2004.

On his release from the stockade, he enrolled in acting school, and discovered his abilities in that field. He made an appearance in The Little Drummer Girl dealing with Palestinian terrorism. In 1987 he spent a year in the Philippines, consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms and talking to monkeys. It was there that he felt, according to a later declaration, that he had shaken off all identities. On his return, he lived as a beachcomber in Tel Aviv, on olives, labneh and garlic, and protested against Israel's response to the first intifada by stripping himself and walking about covered in fake blood. Mishmish Or, an Israeli Jew of Turkish paternal and Egyptian maternal descent, picked him up off the sidewalks and gave him shelter. He eventually had a daughter, Milay, with her. In the meantime his mother Arna set up a children's center to teach over 1500 children in the Jenin camp and asked her son to join her there to teach drama therapy.

Mer-Khamis's first film, The Little Drummer Girl, was an American thriller from 1984 directed by George Roy Hill and starring Diane Keaton, which dealt with the Israeli-Arab conflict. He starred in Avi Nesher's film, Za'am V'Tehilah (1985). Later he appeared in such Israeli films as 51 Bar (1985), Wedding in Galilee (1987), Tel Aviv Stories (1992), Zohar (1993), Under the Domim Tree (1994), and Overture 1812 (1997). He appeared in several films by Amos Gitai: Kedma, Esther (1986) and Kippur (2000).

Juliano Mer-Khamis (Hebrew: ג'וליאנו מר ח'מיס ‎; Arabic: جوليانو مير خميس ‎; born Juliano Khamis; 29 May 1958 – 4 April 2011) was an Israeli Jewish/Palestinian Arab actor, director, filmmaker, and political activist of Jewish and Palestinian Eastern Orthodox Christian parentage. On 4 April 2011, he was assassinated by a masked gunman in the Palestinian city of Jenin, where he had established The Freedom Theatre.

Juliano Khamis (later Mer-Khamis) was born in Nazareth, the son of Arna Mer-Khamis, a former Palmach combatant who had turned communist on experiencing disenchantment with Zionism after participating in operations to drive the Bedouin out of parts of the Negev, and Saliba Khamis, an Israeli Arab of Eastern Orthodox Palestinian Christian descent who was an intellectual as well as one of the leaders of the Israeli Communist Party in the 1950s. He was called Sputnik Khamas at birth. He had two brothers, Spartacus and Abir. His maternal grandfather was Gideon Mer, a scientist who pioneered the study of malaria during the British Mandate. His father abandoned their household when he was 10 years old. He attended school in Haifa. His cousin is Palestinian hip-hop singer Shadia Mansour.