Can ‘Fauda’ Accomplish Its ‘Sacred Mission’?

One of the many harrowing scenes in a current episode of this season’s hit Israeli dramatic series “Fauda” follows several middle-aged members of an elite IDF undercover unit racing a pickup truck through a field on the morning of October 7. They’re trying to rescue dozens of young men and women fleeing the Nova music festival with scores of Hamas terrorists in hot pursuit.

The action was based on the real-life experience of the series’ co-creators, journalist Avi Issacharoff and ‘Fauda’ star Lior Raz, who were among the many volunteers who helped evacuate survivors from kibbutzim near the Gaza border in the wake of the barbaric attack.

Soon after, the two men decided to create a fifth season for the Netflix show and deal with October 7. They said their work on the new season was the most important writing they have ever done, describing their effort as “a sacred mission” – a detailed exploration, from their perspective, of the brutal Hamas attack that day, the revenge it motivated and the trauma that still lives with Israelis three years later.

The result was an 11-episode season of the award-winning series that continues the gripping story of an elite undercover IDF unit seeking to prevent Palestinian terrorism, and along the way deals with the moral and psychological issues raised through their relationships with the enemy. By far the most powerful episodes are No. 7 and No. 8, which revisit the shock and horror of October 7 by focusing on several members of the unit and their valiant effort to save the wife and two teenage children of one of them, trapped on a kibbutz in the family’s small “safe room.”

It is agonizing to watch those two episodes, which end tragically – a soldier unable to save his family, symbolizing an army unable to protect its citizens. What’s especially heartbreaking is that the tale being told is true. The only comfort I had in enduring the experience of seeing the pure evil of the Hamas terrorists close up was in the hope that viewers would come away with a better understanding of the savagery that took place that day and, perhaps, instill a degree of empathy for Israel.

But that’s a very tall order at a time when Israel has become the world’s pariah for the last three years, widely condemned for the destruction of much of Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of citizens. The show’s creators are well aware of the uphill battle they face in trying to open people’s minds and hearts to Israel’s side of the story. But they believe in the importance and authenticity of their work. “I want them [viewers] to look in my character’s eyes,” Raz told The New York Times, “and to see what we felt on those days.” He said he hopes it will “open people’s eyes to see what happened on October 7.”

It’s clear that millions of people around the world watch the series, with 2.1 million viewers the first week the current season aired, according to Netflix. This season of “Fauda” set records in Israel for most viewers, and the numbers were high in other Mideast countries, including Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, and Lebanon, where it ranked No. 1 in viewers, though it’s difficult to know from the data what the response was in terms of changing people’s minds.

TV critics’ reviews generally have praised “Fauda” for its high-quality storylines, acting and suspense, but were mixed in rating the two October 7-related episodes this season. Some noted the poignancy in the shows’ describing Israeli trauma and the feeling of being unprotected. Others, like The Forward, faulted “Fauda” for not dealing with the war in Gaza at all. (Raz and Issaacharoff have explained that they avoided dealing with the Gaza war because the season’s shows were filmed while it was raging and they did not know how it would end.)

Two Miniseries In The ‘70s Had A Major Social Impact

Is it possible for a fictional TV dramatic series to affect an audience’s views of an historical event?

There are two famous examples of television series that had a major impact on American society by telling a story of mass trauma to people who didn’t experience it. The first was “Roots,” an ABC miniseries melodrama that aired on eight consecutive nights in January 1977, and remains one of the highest rated programs in history. More than 100 million viewers – about half of the U.S. population at the time – saw the final episode. The program won 9 Emmy Awards for the saga, based on a novel by Alex Haley, of a black American family over a span of a century, from slavery to freedom.

“Roots” is widely credited with educating many Americans about the tragic history of slavery in America. Vernon Jordan, who was president of the Urban League, described the series as “the single most spectacular educational experience in race relations in America.” (Given the current political climate in the U.S., it’s hard to imagine a series like “Roots” not sparking a major controversy today over its presentation of that era of American history.)

Closer to home for the Jewish community was an NBC drama miniseries, “Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss,” which aired for four consecutive nights in April 1978, and attracted more than 120 million viewers – about half of America. Like “Roots,” it was a fictionalized version of history that focused on the experience of one family. It tells the tragic story of a respected German Jewish physician and his wife and children caught up in the Nazis’ determination to annihilate European Jewry. The series depicts Kristallnacht, the Warsaw Ghetto, the death camps and a harrowing scene of naked women and children taken to the gas chambers.

Though panned by some TV critics as a nighttime soap opera with two-dimensional characters, Tom Shales in The Washington Post called it “the most powerful film ever made for television.” Many others credited it with raising awareness of the horrors of the Nazis’ murderous antisemitism. The series played a role in increasing public discussion of the Holocaust and educational programs in schools across the country. It made the word “Holocaust” more common in referring to the murder of six millions Jews, and increased a consciousness of the Holocaust that was already present in America. Six months after “Holocaust” aired, President Jimmy Carter initiated a presidential commission on the Holocaust whose outcome in 1993 was the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The best known and perhaps sharpest criticism of the miniseries came from Elie Wiesel, the most famous survivor of the Holocaust. Ironically, a television series that focused on the horrors of the Holocaust and was seen by half of America’s population was castigated by the man who dedicated his life to calling attention to the tragedy. In a scathing essay in The New York Times titled “Trivializing The Holocaust: Semi-Fact And Semi-Fiction,” the future Nobel Peace Laureate called the program “untrue, offensive, cheap.” His basic complaint, beyond citing numerous factual errors, was that dramatizing the Holocaust as television entertainment was an insult to the victims and survivors. He concludes: “How is one to tell a tale that cannot be – but must be – told? … I don’t know. All I know is that the witness does not recognize himself in this film.

“The Holocaust must be remembered,” Wiesel writes. “But not as a show.”

Telling ‘Our Story’

In 1978, Elie Wiesel watched “Holocaust” and felt that the Shoah could not be dramatized without betraying it. After October 7, Avi Issaacharoff and Lior Raz believed that the horror of that day for Israel was not fully understood by the world, so they decided to dramatize it. Opposite conclusions, each relevant to the experience.

“Fauda” will never reach the tens of millions of viewers in America that “Holocaust” did. (In the 1970s, the country had three national television networks; today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of TV stations and streaming sources competing for audiences.) But the Israeli show has not been criticized for overly simplifying the Mideast conflict it covers. To the contrary, it has been cited for its accuracy, nuance and insights in reflecting the complexity of the ongoing struggle, placing fictional characters inside real events. And Issaacharoff was direct in explaining the main purpose of this season’s episodes: “It was very important to tell our story, my story, the trauma that we suffered.”

Much of mainstream media has focused heavily on the tragic circumstances Gazans have endured, though too often Israel is blamed for the deaths and destruction rather than Hamas, whose evil strategy is to hide in the tunnels and leave their civilian population unprotected above ground. The co-creators of “Fauda,” in telling their story, dramatize the emotional temptation to respond to the slaughter of innocent Israelis. And they want viewers to feel the helplessness and vulnerability that the whole country felt on October 7.

It is highly unlikely that large numbers of Americans, most of whom oppose the ongoing war and blame Israel for it, will be persuaded by a TV series – no matter how effective – to revisit their views and switch sides. But a more modest goal is possible: helping viewers emotionally understand the Israelis’ experience. Perhaps the biggest success of “Fauda” this season was in giving Israel and its supporters around the world a sense of comfort and appreciation for telling the authentic story, with all its complexity, of this critical moment in Jewish history.