Paradise Now ?

Lets direct our attention to a film called "Paradise Now".  About two childhood friends Khaled and Said, both ready to give their lives for their beliefs that the should stop being treated as inferior in the world from the Israelites.  Here we have two friends beginning in their journey to their final goodbye, oblivious to the fact that they will soon be preparing to die.  they are still only young, whole lives ahead of themselves.  On the day of the mission, where they will martyr themselves, something goes wrong and the two must abandon their objective.  The two split up, Khaled being found by his fellow helpers, and Said going off on his own.  Once reunited after a full day, their roles have shifted between one another, before the mission, Khaled was the one who built his entire life around his beliefs and Said was the one who thought that this was not the way forward.  By the time they plan the next mission, Said is ready to martyr whereas Khaled is not ready to give his life away.  (spoiler alert) The conclusion is that Said martyrs himself without Khaled, as he lock him in the getaway car so that Khaled may live on.  

We eventually find out that the reason Said actually killed himself is that he cannot bear to go back to the broken down war zone that he calls home, so in essence, it was rather an act of selfishness rather than that of a martyr.  The one who manages to convince Khaled to turn is in fact the daughter of the leader of the martyrs Suha, daughter to Abu Salim.  She explains that the more people martyr themselves the more people get hurt and the worse the situation gets for the ones who are left behind, families and friends.  

It was not right of either of them to attempt to carry out their mission in the first place.  Even the fact that Jamal decided their fate with the flip of a coin didn't make them reconsider.  It shows how expendable people are to Salim.  He will sacrafice everyone but himself to ensure the safety of his people, but his ignorance is that he cannot see , all these bombs are making things worse.  The more people die in Israel, the more people are killed by the military in trying to find the culprits.  

Khamed seemed to make the most sense out of things in the end.  He didn't want to kill himself for no cause but to harm more than is needed and he knew this.  In coming to this conclusion he decided that both Said and himself need to live.  Unfortunately, Said, shrouded in his own perspective, decides to go on alone and die's for his own personal matters, namely the death of his father and the hell that he goes through every day when he returns home.  

This film shows the reality to martyrs around the world, that they are doing things for a false cause, a cause which is not real, but a false hope of a paradise which does not exist.

"i'd rather have to live in the paradise in my head than go back to the refugee camp" Khaled.