Saturday, August 29, 2015

The Green Prince-A Brief Review


Last night I watched the 2014 Sundance award-winning documentary film, The Green Prince. The title refers to Palestinian-born Mosab Hassan Yousef, he was given this title by the Israeli secret service-Bet Shin because the Hamas-Palestinian flag is green, and Mosab is the son of one of Hamas’ founding leaders, Sheikh Hassan Yousef.
   The film consists essentially of three people Mosab and his dad, as well as Israeli Bet Shin member Gonen Ben-Yitzhak, who recruited Mosab to become an informer for the Israelis.  
   The film is documentary style, so takes the form of mainly monologues with interspersed footage of photos and videos of the events being described by Mosab and Gonen.
   Since Mosab became a kind of “gatekeeper” for his dad, he was trusted by the Hamas inner circle and was therefore able to share very important intelligence information with the Israelis. As a result of his espionage activities, he was instrumental in preventing many Hamas suicide bombings and assassinations, thus saving many Jewish lives.
   Eventually, Mosab’s life was in danger, and he was given asylum in the USA, after the testimony of Gonen before US authorities.
   In the monologues of Mosab, one comes to appreciate and empathize with the moral-ethical and spiritual issues and dilemmas he had to live with on a daily basis, as well as the consequences of becoming a Bet Shin informer against his own father, which ironically, saved his father’s life without his father even being aware of it.

   Mosab came to realize that Hamas’ methods and ideology were corrupt and evil and eventually left the Muslim faith to become a Christian. He has written a book of his experiences called Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue and Unthinkable Choices. For more information on the book, The Green Prince, etc., visit Mosab’s website here.    

Saturday, August 1, 2015

This day in music history

This day, August 1, 1971, in music history, marks the Benefit Concert to help the people of Bangladesh, which was primarily organised by my favourite Beatle, George Harrison. Here's a very brief video with a few remarks from Harrison and other musicians. I think this was one of the best pop-rock-folk music concerts ever because these most accomplished musicians shared their talents in the service of suffering human beings in a desperate situation.