Listening to THE GREEN PRINCE

Nadav Schirman, Gonen Ben Yitzak, Mossab Hassan Yousef , San Franisco, CA 7/25/14

THE GREEN PRINCE won’t be released in this country until September. Based in part on the book Son of Hamas, by Mossab Hassan Yousef, it is a riveting, illuminating documentary in which Yousef, son of a co-founder of Hamas, looks directly into the camera and tells the audience about being recruited by Shin Beit agent Gonen Ben Yitzak to spy for Israel. Ben Yitzak also, but separately, tells his side of the story directly to the camera. Annotated with film clips of the events described, the result is nothing less than riveting as this stranger-than-fiction story unfolds into a story of wrenching emotional pain, and, ultimately, hope that we can move beyond the political and the cultural and see each other as people like ourselves. Yousef and Ben Yitzak, forced to trust each other with their lives, formed a personal bond, making them more than friends, they are now brothers in every sense of the word except the genetic.

After the film’s screening at the opening night of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 24, 2014, Yousef and Ben Yitzak surprised the audience by joining the film’s director Navad Schirman for an audience Q &A after receiving a standing ovation from that audience. I was priviliged to talk to the three the next day, and I asked Yousef to expand on something he had said the night before about all of us being children of light. I’ll be posting the full interview in a few months, but what Yousef had to say can’t wait.

Click here for the full interview.