Amira's Honor

 سبحان الله !....الشعب الفلسطيني المسكين المحتل المهجر المشرد المتآمر عليه دوليا و إقليميا و حتى عربيا من طرف بعض الأنظمة العربية المطبعة الخائنة ، وصلت بهم الدرجة التشكيك في "شرف و عرض " الشعب الفلسطيني ! تحياتي لكل شريف فلسطيني  و شريفة

Glory be to God!...the miserable, occupied, displaced Palestinian people, that were conspired against internationally, regionally, and even in the Arab world, by the treacherous media, have reached the low point that its very honor is being questioned! Greetings to every honest and honorable Palestinian! 

The reactions to the Egyptian film Amira have been very emotional. Above is one comment. (The translation is mine). The story is about a prisoner's sperm being smuggled out by a guard, who substitutes the sperm with his own. Since hundreds of children were born this way, the film undermines the honor and the morale of the Palestinians. 

Rotten tomatoes writes:

Amira is a highly contrived, ridiculous melodrama seeping with endless implausible details that rob the story of any credibility it may have had. The biggest crime of the film though is its portrayal of Palestinian society.

The community of Amira - essentially a microcosm of Palestine as the film implies - is a band of freaks: a company of sexist brutes with not an ounce of empathy in their souls. The Palestine of Amira is a conservative, hypocritical place populated by merciless patriarchs only concerned with preserving their honor rather than safeguarding the daughter who grew with them and among them; a daughter who had no hand in the great shame they plaster her with.

This is an insultingly regressive, bafflingly over-simplified, imprudently outdated treatment of a Palestine clearly concocted by an outsider. Its take on identity is shallow and largely underexplored; its depiction of the downgraded status of women in middle-class families is Victorian in essence. At a time when the evolving discourse around women's rights across the region has shifted towards body integrity and equal rights, Diab is still stuck on honor and virginity.