"Paradise Now" is not an Arab film. This is a film in the style of the Western hemisphere, clearly made according to the genre principle of "a film of protest". If it were not so close to us, situated, let’s say, in South America or in Ireland, we could have been able to believe it, but then there remains the open question would inhabitants of South America or Ireland believe it?

The Terror of Suicide is all the rage in the market. This is not the right time to generate the real picture or to make risky experiences in a quest for new cinematic tools. The first one to produce a film on the terrorists in Nablus will sweep a fund. If you won’t catch the niche swiftly, somebody else will. The spectators are meant to understand the film. For this to happen, the film should talk to them in understandable language and in well-known imagery .

All the required components, in order to produce a film that will be presented at festivals and compete for prizes, are included here. The scenery of Nablus from the mountain range is photographed in the beams of the setting sun. Young men search for their way and in the meantime work in a garage. Ideological indecisions and a little love. Simple food and the hospitality of a poor family. A spectacled teacher worries for his students and their studies. An arrogant Israeli soldier in the film’s opening scene examines the certificate and suitcase of a nice looking Arab girl, while his cynic and harsh glance rests upon her.

The film does not deal with the details of war and the different meanings of the "occupation" concept that is in use by various population groups in the Middle East. That would be adverse to the idea of a film planned to be as shallow as poster paper.

Indeed, bellicose Islam is presented here, but as the story goes on, it is pushed into a remote corner. The spectacled teacher is the one who informs Haled and Said they have to avenge tomorrow. He talks to them about paradise, but without the embarrassing reference to the 72 virgins. They pray, and swear on the Koran to avenge in the name of Allah.

But they don't perform "the action" right away. That will happen only after they are deterred and return from it, in order to serve the spectator the required portion of suffering, hesitation, hatred of the enemy and speeches for liberty she needs.

The authors didn't forget to include a scene with a nighttime visit of a young man to the house of a girl who lives alone. Their meeting includes a drink of tea on the couch in the living room. The girl doesn't seem to fear to be murdered as a result of having “desecrated family honor" . The film doesn't tell us details about life; that is not necessary from the viewpoint of the targeted audience. The authors know - for the spectators to believe, they must be gracefully cheated.

Spectators love the kind of film that serves them a universal, easily digestible, story. It expands their horizons and creates empathy. The commander of the terrorist group, who embraces the destined martyrs, has every appearance of being heroic, one that wouldn't embarrass his colleagues in any underground film around the world. This is not Raad Carmi , the ruffian terrorist from Tulkarem, who sent his people to execute attacks in order to exploit their wives in their absence. Here, we see a typical popular film hero, superior and pure.

Two of the suicide terrorists shave, put on black suits and adopt the look of young lawyers, undistinguishable from any young lawyer anywhere. They are excited about the oncoming "action", like before receiving their diploma at the Bar.

In the movie, we do not see a woman who has been given a choice to die as a martyr or by knife as the "desecrator of family honor". We also do not see the teenagers, who are forced to be suicide-bombers, while being threatened with harm to their families, if they refuse.

Of course, neither don't we see a young boy of poor education, struggling to read the testament which is dictated to him. All the more, he did not obtain deep knowledge of Islam and Jihad. Also, don’t expect the film hero to search for a bus full of families returning from prayer at the Western Wall on Saturday night, as it happens in the real life.

By contrast, a young eloquent fellow is presented. During the filming of the testament with a broken camera, he suddenly remembers to tell his mother to replace the faucet filter. His friend Sa’id does not explode the first bus he encounters. He notices, among the Jews who get on the bus, a mother with a little boy and decides to withdraw.

Sa’id, the main hero, returns to Nablus, visits his father’s tomb and has proper cinematic doubts. In front of the commander of the terrorist group, he gives a pensive but ardent speech against "the occupation". Israel is not mentioned by name; this is a universal speech against all "occupations", real and pseudo. Only then he finally decides…

At the lower stratum of the present war, there are organizations that struggle to free Palestine and Europe from the rule of "heretics". They oppose cinema art and do what they think is right in a vile way, without any internal conflicts. At the upper stratum, there is an eternal symbiosis between the murderer and the victim, between the propagandist and his audience, between the corrupt politician and the nation that applauds him.

In the last moment, Haled, the friend of Sa’id in the film, decides to return and search for "a different way". Then, miraculously, his operators come to pick him up without delay. They don't tell him, like in a similar, real, situation, a girl named Shafika was told: "many people expect you to explode yourself, so you’d better do it".

They simply take him back home, and he goes away and mourns his friend, whom he will never see again. If the author does not fill the ninety minutes of the film with agony, the film will not sweep the audience in Paris, right?

The finale scene: a bus, the majority of the passengers are soldiers, no children are seen. Next to the terrorist sits a toll soldier with a parachutist’s badge, talking with a woman soldier. The camera focuses for a long time on the sad eyes of the terrorist and then, the white background fills the screen, apparently to symbolize the detonation.

Cut… There are no human limbs beings spread on the asphalt and no rescue team with covered plastic shoes, collecting burned shreds of human flesh. The film transfers images in order to buy the spectator's heart, and it has to be clean, like the films made in the time of World War II. They, too, described sterile war, full of gorgeous heroes, foolish enemies and sublime feelings.

"Paradise Now" is reminiscent of the propaganda video clips for the sake of death, broadcasted by Palestinian television since the rise of the PLO, "partners for peace". There, also, you can't see spilled bowels and dying spasms. There is only clean death, fast and without suffering. It's like opening a door to a world of complete immaculateness.