The Green Prince

Of all unlikely people to feel brotherly love, the unlikeliest might be an Israeli intelligence agent and the son of a Hamas leader. Israel and Hamas have been at war since the birth of the Palestinian terrorist group in 1986. This summer they bombed one another with renewed vigor.

The Green Prince tells the true story of Mosab Hassan Yousef, eldest son of a Hamas co-founder and an informant for Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence agency, since he was 18. For a decade he lived a double life, pretending to support his father’s friends while thwarting their terror plots. Along the way he became a Christian and inadvertently befriended his Israeli Shin Bet handler, Gonen ben Yitzhak.

When you hear the James Bond–like activities they coordinated—bombing Yousef’s house to convince Hamas he wasn’t a spy, arranging for his father to be jailed to protect him from assassination—you have to remind yourself it isn’t fiction.

Yousef moved to the United States in 2007. His life story, revealed in his 2010 bestseller, Son of Hamas, is so thrilling director Nadav Schirman only needed to ensure his documentary didn’t ruin it. It doesn’t: Schirman builds convincing tension with re-enacted and simulated military and drone scenes, along with authentic footage of terror attacks (including gruesome injuries that, along with a mention of sexual abuse, earn the film its PG-13 rating).

Yousef and ben Yitzhak narrate on camera, revealing how a psychological tug of war between them evolved into mutual trust (and ruined ben Yitzhak’s career). When Yousef later faced U.S. deportation and death threats, ben Yitzhak aided him unexpectedly, risking his own reputation. “Gonen is a brother today and I wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my life to save his,” Yousef says. “I owe him.”

The film misfires once by inadequately describing what secretly motivated Yousef to prevent violence: his journey from Islam to Christianity. For that aspect, see Yousef’s book, where he explains how “the message of Jesus—love your enemies” freed him from a prison of revenge.