Here's a heartwarming fact we learn early on in Nadiv Schirman's documentary: In Palestine, or at least the parts of Palestine sympathetic to the extremist organization Hamas, collaborating with Israel is far more shameful than raping one's own mother. Not that Oedipal rape is approved of, but as Hamas-scion-turned-Israeli-spy Mosab Hassan Yousef explains, your mom had best keep it to herself, since Palestinian society blames the victim, and the reputation of having been raped is ultimately worse than the rape itself. This cheery thought hangs over much of The Green Prince as Mosab, the son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, tells his story of how his fundamental human decency and objections to the organization's brutally violent tactics — as well as his own painful memories of having been raped as a child, an event he had to keep secret out of institutional shame — led him to collaborate with Israeli intelligence agent Gonen Ben Yitzhak, eventually spying on Hamas under his father's nose for more than a decade. Though much of The Green Prince is Mosab and Gonen's talking heads augmented by archival footage, the picture comes across like a mix of a techno-thriller and a Saw movie, which is appropriate enough for the many real-life horrors on display.
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