The Green Prince

It was interesting, after seeing so many movies of Palestinians turned to serve the Israeli Shin Bet, to see a documentary on The Green Prince, who surely must have inspired these stories.

In some ways, though, this documentary presents a cleaner narrative than any of the movies we've seen, which is also pretty interesting. Our Palestinian protagonist is Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father is a high-ranking member of Hamas—though apparently the non-terrorist wing of Hamas.

The astounding thing about Yousef's story is that he is steeped in anti-Israeli propaganda his whole life, but upon being arrested and witnessing Hamas' actions in jail versus his treatment at the hands of his captors, he begins to realize that it actually is propaganda. The Israelis aren't the bad guys.

This is magnified by Hamas' terror rampage against civilians.

So, here's the real life drama of a guy who doesn't want to betray his country, especially doesn't want to betray his own father and family, but still has the integrity to see things as they really are.

Ironically, perhaps, the worst Israeli bashing comes from his handler, Gonen Ben Yitzhak. Much like in the movies, Yitzhak has a lot of issues with Shin Bet tactics in Palestine. This is understandable, given that he had to deal with the issue of betrayal, himself, though in his case, the betrayal was of Yousef.

At the same time, it's hard to fault the organization trying to (and often succeeding in) thwarting Hamas' despicable tactics.

On the three-point documentary Blake scale:

1) The material is good and interesting.

2) It's well presented, though sparing. This isn't a big-budget documentary with a lot of fancy recreations. There's one overhead shot of a guy getting into a van on a deserted road that's used several times.

3) Bias. None that I detected, except sympathy for the human beings involved. It doesn't really try to change minds on the nature of the conflict. It lets Yitzhak have his say about the Shin Bet. It also points out that the psychotic fixation Palestinians have on the Israelis makes them extremely gullible, as when the morons tramping around a funeral with RPGs accidentally fire one off. The smoke hasn't cleared before the Palestinians are convinced that it was a nefarious Jewish plot.

And as incompetent as these Palestinian terror groups are, there's always fodder to suspect The Jews.