civlee
Love the simple format. Appreciated the pace and lack of manipulation.Amazing story of courage, honesty, love, betrayal and sacrifice.Feel inspired by the courage of the characters. Although loyalty and doing the right thing is often portrayed in movies/stories, seldom do you see it in real life as this story so clearly illustrates.One can hope that it could inspire people to have the courage to think for themselves and question governmental, religious or business activities that don't follow the golden rule.Thank you to all who participated in bringing this story to light. It's not often we see the real sacrifices people around the world are making to make the world a better and safer place.
xeni-dautzi
I'm not going to write too much as I'm not experienced in reviewing and am simply studying film and happened to attend a Documentary Festival to view this documentary without knowing the context of it. I personally found this documentary to be very educational and interesting, the story being told by the real subjects, not actors, as many people think, really makes a difference. It was highly informative but has been described as one sided by many viewers, I suppose you could say so but as John Battsek stated in an interview 'You cannot satisfy both sides'. After watching this documentary there was a debate about it between a Palestinian and an expert in Palestinian politics and history, they described this documentary as 'Israeli Propaganda', however I feel that their reasons for this were more personal than simply critiquing the film. I found it enticing and was drawn into the story with its original footage and narration. It didn't focus on anything but the Hamas movement and the involvement of the Shin Bet, things like the lack of information on certain events such as assassinations etc. but that was not meant to be the focus of this documentary and therefore I find the little information given justified.
jakob13
As violence in Jerusalem increases, you may want to see a 2014 Sundance prizewinning documentary that the Village Cinema is holding over for another week: Nadav Schirman's Green Prince, an intriguing, edge-of-the-seat thriller, based on Mosab Hassan Yousef's Son of Hamas: a gripping account of terror, political intrigue and unthinkable choices. El Emir Akhdah is the story of the oldest son of founding Hamas member Sheikh Hassan Yousef, arrested by Israel's Shin Bet in 1999 during the Second Intifida. The secret service, not believing its good luck, managed to induce the 17-year-old to become a "sleeper agent." During 10 years, he proved very effective "mole;" as his father's eldest son he assisted his father in his political activities; and had entrée to Hamas highest leadership circles. From his privileged status, he kept a certain pulse of what seems a war without a solution between Israel and a Palestinian political entity.Shin Bet ennobled him with the sobriquet El Emir Akhdah or Green Prince. Truly, for them, he was a sparkling jewel in the dark art of spying. And as such, over time, they schooled in the craft of intelligence, thereby turning him into a finely honed instrument at the service of Israel's intelligence agency.In the world of Palestinian and Israeli cinema, the Green Prince is not the first film that deals with turning Palestinians into collaborators.Although in a very limited run, 2014 saw Hany Abu-Assad's Omar and Yuval Adler's Jerusalem. One is a realistic view of "how a highly aware Palestinian defines himself," according to Omar's co-author Ali Waked, that endows its protagonist Arab or Jew with a human face under an regime of occupation approaching a half-century. The other is a stock action film, less complex that ably serves Israeli interests. Given the subject matter, the more sophisticated Green Prince, too, serves Israeli propaganda purposes. Shirman's documentary has the feel of a representation as though Hosab and his Shin Bet handler Gonan Ben Yitzhak were appearing on a stage, but with the flexibility and liberty of the camera that breathes fuller life to Hosab's odyssey. The closer he becomes to Ben Yitzhak, the younger Yousef bonds psychologically with his handler—otherwise known as Stockholm Syndrome—of what he sees as the barbarity and futility of Hamas' armed resistance. Unsurprisingly, this management of a "turncoat" transforms a friendship, seemingly based on shared experience if not exactly belief, contrary to his Shin Bet training and unwritten code. Strategically, Schirman juxtaposes scene of talking heads with Shin Bet archival material of secret drone shots of Hosab's movements that render more immediate the covert hold the secret service had on him.This language of hidden images brings to mind Dror Moreh fascinating documentary detailing the highly sophisticated surveillance network that the Shin Bet has perfected to track its own Arab citizens as well as Palestinian Arabs in the Palestinian territories that it has occupied for almost a half-century. And yet, despite Israel's vast spy and military enterprise to achieve its goals of defeating Hamas, Shin Bet was caught by surprise by the unexpected outbreak of the first Intifida, as though the work of 40 odd years of population control had become a soured dream. As the Green Prince, Omar and Jerusalem end in one tragedy or another: the cooperation wittingly or not with "an enemy of one's country" ends in death or exile. After 10 years of unflinching service to his Shin Bet masters El Emir Akhdah wanted out, but the secret service was unwilling to release him. Whilst on a visit to the US, he applied for political asylum; Israel informed Homeland Security that he was a son of a noted Hamas terrorist. Having confessed to his father that he intended to defect, the US government was on the point of deported him to Jordan which would mean certain death. The ties of friendship that held Ben Yitzhak to Hoseb fostered a generosity of spirit and humanity by what should have been seen as a relation between "occupier" and "occupied," was in reality a fondness and an expression of good will. So, unwillingly to see his friend "betrayed" after loyal service to Israel, Ben Yitzhak "outed" himself as a Shin Bet agent, flew to the US and testified to Hosab's decade service as a deep under cover agent.In spite of the excellence of Schirman's film, it is a-historic, since it provides no context for why the Second Intifada occurred. And the germ of that uprising lay in the Temple Mont that prime minister Ariel Sharon chose to visit as an expression of Jewish Israeli right to seemingly pray in Islam's third holiest site, Dome of the Rock or Al Aksaa Mosque.Today, right-wing Jewish fanatics insist on praying in the Mosque. Once again, it seems as though we are witnessing a replay of Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mont. Should we expect a Third Intifada, so quick on Israel's war in June 2014 against Hamas in Gaza—a war that ended, as it usually does in terrible civilian deaths and a political stalemate.In the end Green Prince, no matter how polished a film it is, remains one sided and a distortion of the lethal reality in Israel and its occupation of the Palestinians and their territory.
