A force for change and hope - too much for some in Palestine

Just a few days after I posted this film on my website, the director of the Freedom Theatre, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was shot in his car, his (uninjured) son on his lap. Born of a Jewish mother and Palestinian father, he saw himself as 100% both - at least logically enough. The Freedom Theatre was a resurrection of his mother's theatre group; he had made a film about her shortly before her death, 'Arna's Children'. Her original theatre was destroyed during the first Intifada.

He had had to deal with threats since reopening: a production of Animal Farm got under the skin of the PA for instance, who took it personally as a suggestion that Fatah was collaborating. That incurred a petrol bomb. But friends and colleagues are determined that his work in the theatre, children's education and liberation and as a force for reconciliation will continue. An international theatre festival is already at the planning stage.

He leaves his partner, Jenny Nyman, pregnant with twins. She said, " He was aware of the danger and, though he joked about it, he was sometimes afraid. But he always said that he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees."