Jordan officially announced this week, and oddly enough, that it is withdrawing its Oscar nomination for the film "Amira", which was produced and filmed on its behalf and on its soil for the American production giant Netflix, due to its involvement in the most explosive and sensitive issue in the Arab world. Which are defined by many in the world as "freedom fighters".
"Amira" - a joint Jordanian, Egyptian and Palestinian production - tells the story of a Palestinian girl named Amira, whose father, a security prisoner, was arrested before she was born and sentenced to decades in an Israeli prison.
After growing up and becoming a smart girl, she began to ask the hard questions - especially how she was born to a father who was in prison, when he was banned from physical contact of any kind.
After heavy pressure, the father agreed to perform a tissue test, and to her astonishment - and here the great crisis and harsh criticism of the film - she discovers that it is not his biological daughter even though he smuggled his semen, but of an Israeli prisoner who used to meet her mother.
Security prison cell in Ofer Prison (archive), Photo: Moshe Shai
It seems that the film puts on the table a very sensitive subject, a sacred cow, which many prefer not to talk about and not to bring it up on the agenda but to accept it as it is.
Especially when the official factual figures speak of 96 boys and girls born to Palestinian security prisoners, who managed, according to the official version, to smuggle their semen out of the walls of Israeli prisons, and thus managed to have children.
The storm in Jordan over the film has not yet subsided and has already led to the publication of an official apology by some of the actors in the media and on social networks, especially towards the security prisoners and their families.
The main apology was to express deep regret over the collaboration with the production.
The film, as mentioned, managed to flood complex questions that are taboo, that no one dares to raise in public, and certainly not ask for answers to them, especially those related to the health issue and the reliability of sperm smuggling from prison.
The issue of prisoners in Palestinian society is one of the most sensitive, important and sacred issues for the entire public.
There is not a single family that has no past or present ties to a security prisoner, and the Palestinian public is united in its need to support prisoners and assist them and their families.
It can be stated that this is the first issue in its importance after the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and is undoubtedly more important than the issue of refugees.
Hence, at the basis of all the negotiations that have taken place so far between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the issue of prisoners has been one of the most difficult rocks of controversy.
In Israel they are seen as having committed crimes, and among the Palestinian public they are seen as freedom fighters who sacrificed their freedom for the homeland.
In the meantime, the film has also been released from the screens, and it seems that it will take a long time before there is the courage to raise an issue such as the birth of children of security prisoners by smuggling semen from Israeli prisons.
Any such discourse, which can raise assessments and hypotheses in the justice of prisoners, may lead to harsh criticism and boycott of anyone who dares to raise difficult questions to the public agenda.
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