Zacharia Zubeidi, of the burnt face and bullet-riddled arm, is one of the Freedom Theatre’s founders who was also one of Arna’s children, seen as a kid in the film of the same name that Arna’s son Juliano Mer Khamis made in 2004. Arna Mer Khamis, who grew up in a Jewish Israeli Zionist family, ended up rejecting the Zionist ideology and marrying Saliba Khamis, a Palestinian from Nazareth. During the first Intifada, she moved to Jenin refugee camp where “she established an alternative education system for Palestinian children, after their schools were closed by the Israeli occupation.”Arjan Al Fessed in a review of the film for Electronic Intifada further informs us how
Through her dedication to the children, Arna Mer Khamis play[ed] an important role in the Jenin community. The theatre group that she started engaged children from Jenin refugee camp, helping them to express their everyday frustrations, anger, bitterness and fear.
Zacharia Zubeidi (second from the right) during the Israeli assault on Jenin
Zacharia himself was one of those children in her school and theatre group, the only one of four boys seen in the film who is still alive, who became a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade that fought against the Israelis during the Second Intifada. He is a veteran of Israeli jails, imprisoned for four years because of his role as a leader of Jenin camp’s 2002 battle against the invading Israelis – his mother shot and killed by an Israeli sniper’s gunfire, his brother and two best friends killed in the same battle. After his best friend Sabbagh was killed by an Israeli gunship in November 2002, Zacharia replaced him as the head of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, and soon became known in Israel as the Black Rat for his skill in dodging the army’s attempts to kill him. As we walk around the camp – now a regular town of concrete houses – Zacharia points out an iron horse in the middle of a street, built with scrap metal from destroyed vehicles: including the Red Cross ambulance that had been carrying Dr. Khalil Suleiman, a Palestinian doctor in Jenin, to help the wounded. Head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society Emergency Medical Service (effectively the ambulance service) in Jenin, Dr. Suleiman was killed and two other medical personnel seriously injured when the ambulance he was riding in was hit by a rifle-mounted grenade fired by the Israeli Defence Forces. The sculpture, Zacharia tells us, commemorates the spirit of Jenin’s resistance and its martyrs. It was pretty mind-blowing to be shown around Jenin by one of its living heroes (who is however, now on the payroll of the detested PA), and who was also a close friend of Juliano Mer Khamis, son of Arna, with whom he co-founded the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Juliano, who often referred to himself as “100% Palestinian, and 100% Jewish” and was seen by many on the Left as “a symbol of the bi-national dream, a walking advertisement for solidarity and coexistence”, was killed by an assailant in 2011 in Jenin, the identity and motive of his killer still both unsolved mysteries though many theories abound. Some see the hands of Israel, others a disaffected Palestinian who may have represented those in Jenin who felt suspicious of Juliano’s work and motives.
An Israeli tank advances through the Jenin refugee camp during the fierce battle, 2002
Zacharia replaced his friend to lead the Al-Aqsa Brigades, and soon became known in Israel as the Black Rat for his skill in dodging the Israeli army
We are greeted by Nabeel Al Raee, the Artistic Director and his wife the Portugese-born Micaela Miranda, Theatre School Director of the Jenin Freedom Theatre, in front of the building that houses its theatre space as well as administrative offices and a seating room for visitors upstairs. As we are being shown around the premises, we are joined by Mustafa Sheta, General Secretary of the company, and in response to some of my questions, we learn that the theatre school has instituted small income generation schemes like fees for workshops for interested groups, and that it now boasts a 3-year training professional theatre school as a form of cultural resistance.
Indeed, as Micaela, (who is married to Nabeel) tells us, “We want to try to understand what it means to do theatre as a form of cultural resistance, to ask of ourselves and encourage our students to ask, ‘What is resistance?’ and by imparting tools of critical thinking to students – to have them challenge idea that cultural resistance is something separate from other kinds of resistance. The stage for us is a laboratory for Life!”
Scene from a performance by the Jenin Freedom Theatre
I then ask Nabeel about his experience in Karachi at the theatre festival there. His face lights up and I can sense his pleasure was genuine at having met Pakistani theatre activists
After a quick tour – we are on schedule to return by 2 pm to Bir Zeit for an afternoon with the faculty and students there who are coming to hear us share something about our work – Nabeel, Miranda and Mustafa (who I recall meeting last fall in Brooklyn at a fundraiser for the Jenin Freedom Theatre when they were here on tour) – invite us to join them for orange juice or coffee at a nearby cafe. Over a refreshing cool OJ, Nabeel, smoking non-stop (most Palestinians we’ve met seem to smoke) describes some of his early training in the Hakawati Arabic tradition of storytelling, then going to Tunisia for further training, then at the Al Kasbah theatre academy at Ramallah before joining JFT. I’m impressed at the seriousness with which actor- and theatre-training is taken here in the Occupied Territories. Micaela also joins the conversation, as does Mustafa, and they describe how they like to start with coaxing personal stories out of their participants to shape a theatre piece, building the political from the personal, like all good feminists! Last year was their 10th-year anniversary and as their Annual Report also states:
More than 10,000 children, youth and adults in Jenin refugee camp and across the occupied west Bank were involved in our workshops, trainings and performances in theatre, film, and creative writing, all aiming to generate critical perspectives, reimagine reality and challenge oppression.
Each of them nods when Nabeel tells me: “We are now professional artists and fighters (gesturing toward Zacharia, who smiles), and political activists who are engaged in building a holistic culture of resistance.”
The costs of opposing Zionist ideology on a US campus: a letter published by the author and fellow student activists at Tufts University, in 1987
I then ask Nabeel about his experience in Karachi at the theatre festival there; his face lights up and I can sense his pleasure was genuine in being there and meeting the theatre activists of Pakistan. As he put it to me, “It was a great experience in all dimensions to be there to see the political and cultural scene and meet face to face with people in the art world; and our play, Return to Palestine enjoyed a wonderful reception!” Grinning, he gives a reciprocal thumbs-up to NAPA artistic director Zein Ahmed’s production about the life of a married couple: “I felt every moment despite the language difference; it was a deep and dramatic story that applies to every couple in the whole world!”
After saying to each other that we would stay in touch and try to come up with some possibilities of doing joint work between Palestinian and Pakistani theatre activists, we parted company with the Jenin folk and AS drove us to Bir Zeit University, stopping only for a quick bite to eat at a small café he knew that made delicious falafel. Exhausted but exhilarated from our morning travels and meetings, we made it looking somewhat bedraggled I’m sure, to the crowd of 25-30 undergrads and professors seated around a large oval table in a classroom awaiting our arrival.
Re-energised by our expectant and interested audience, my colleague and I make our respective interventions, my own beginning with a shout-out to Marwan Barghouti and the other hunger strikers, followed by a description of my career to date that has included varying levels of harassment/intimidation I’ve faced – as have countless other academics and activists in the USA – who dare to criticise the Zionist narrative and try to provide information on the brutal reality of the ongoing occupation of Palestine. I projected onscreen a letter that a group of fellow student activists and I had published in the Tufts University student paper back in 1987 when I was starting my graduate studies there. An old Lebanese friend with whom I’d recently gotten back in touch had found it in his files.
But I also noted how things have changed for the better on United States campuses, from those days when I was a grad student freshly arrived from Pakistan, to now, when BDS is gaining strength and students who used to confuse Palestine with Pakistan have morphed into ardent defenders of the human rights of Palestinians in the face of Zionist aggression. Thankfully the canard that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism has been largely laid to rest, though of course, we now have the rise of Jared Kushner to contend with. One step forward, two steps back, I guess!
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is Professor of English and Director of the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at Montclair State University in NJ, USA. She was Visiting Professor of the Arts at NYU Abu Dhabi for the spring term of 2017
