What’s Wrong with ‘Fauda Season 5’?
Like all other Israelis, I have not yet seen the film “NAZA” that has aroused so much controversy, though that doesn’t seem to prevent people from having very strong opinions about something they haven’t seen. I figured that the next best thing was to watch all 11 episodes of “Fauda Season 5”.
Eli, Doron and Steve, the central Israeli characters in Season 5 (Photo: You Tube)
I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, as we approach the 3rd anniversary of October 7th, and the memorial service that will be held by the hostage families, it provides a very vivid image of the horrors of the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and a very clear explanation for the ongoing traumatic impact it has had on Israelis. I too lost friends from the southern kibbutzim like peace activist Vivian Silver from Kibbutz Be’eri and journalist/peace activist Oded Lifshitz from Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was killed in captivity in Gaza.
However, while previous episodes tried to show things from both an Israeli and a Palestinian point of view, “Season 5” only focuses on an Israeli point of view, what happened to Israelis and how they are feeling. There isn’t a single reference to the deaths and destruction caused by the disproportionate Israeli retaliatory actions in Gaza. It also seems to suggest that all Palestinians are Hamas, in the spirit of the idea that there are no innocent Palestinians. They all want to kill us.
In addition, the focus on European volunteers helping to carry out terrorist activity against Israel seems to be a reaction to European criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza, such as the reaction of the Irish soccer players in the recent game against the Israeli national team. It is not based on real European terrorist activity, but an apparent attempt to suggest that there is total European identification with Hamas, without any sense of the horror Europeans and others feel over the images coming out of Gaza that the average Israeli doesn’t see.
French actress Melanie Laurent plays Ann, the French wife of a Palestinian terrorist, who joins other European volunteers in a terrorist mission against Israel (Photo: Yahoo)
One of the two creators and screenwriters of “Fauda”, journalist Avi Issacharoff, is highly critical of Netanyahu’s policies in interviews and columns, but there is no hint of that criticism in the series. I don’t know what the views of the other writer Lior Raz are who is also the lead actor in the series. In the final Episode 11 at the funeral scene, actor Idan Amedi, the character Sagi Tzur in previous episodes, who was seriously injured in the Gaza fighting and supports Netanyahu’s policies appears, but he doesn’t say anything, just hugs Doron (Lior Raz) and Steve.
It is interesting to note that “Fauda Season 5” is the most popular Netflix program in Lebanon (!) and is also watched in Egypt and other Arab and Muslim countries.
Does that mean that they identify with the script? Are they pro-Israeli in the struggle against Hamas? Right-wing Israelis consider “Fauda Season 5” to be a counterpoint to “NAZA”, though they have never seen it. Netanyahu’s call to deprive filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of their citizenship, and calls to “hang them in the village square”, are outrageous. They are the realization of Prof. Yehoshua Leibowitz’s warning about how the continuation of the occupation would lead to a barbarization of Israeli society.
I am looking forward to eventually being able to see “NAZA” in November when it will be streamed for free on The Guardian website. Then it will be possible to write a serious critique of the film. Also to seeing if there will be a “Fauda Season 6”, and if it will return to a more balanced approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
