The new season of the Israeli hit series Fauda stirs a lot of emotions, both in Israel and beyond. In the fifth, newest season of the series, extensive attention is given to the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and the trauma Israel suffered then.
The big question leading up to the new season was how the Israeli creators would portray the events. According to critics, the episodes are much less nuanced than previous seasons.
"There is now strikingly much emphasis on the Israeli perspective," says David Halbfinger, bureau chief of The New York Times in Israel. "In my opinion, the creators made less effort to give viewers reasons to sympathize with the people being hunted. That was very noticeable."
What is the series about?
In Fauda, a retired Israeli top agent searches for a Palestinian fighter he thought he had killed. This search causes a series of chaotic events.
Central to the series is a special unit within the Israeli army that infiltrates among the Palestinians to expose Hamas fighters.
The Netflix series has been a major international success for years. In earlier seasons, the series tried to highlight both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, says Halbfinger. "By not only giving the Israeli security personnel a human face, but also the opponents."
But that was before the attacks on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage. Precisely that event is now central in the fifth season of Fauda.
Own trauma central
Creators Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz feel that international attention to the trauma of the attacks has waned three years later and wanted to tell the new season from their "own trauma." In a recent interview at a Jewish debate center in New York, Issacharoff says: "We wanted to describe it from our own pain. The pain of people living in Israel who experienced this traumatic event. Maybe it was a kind of therapy for us."
The creators disagree with the criticism that the new season pays less attention to the Palestinian side. In the same interview, Raz says that international criticism of Israel is also addressed in the series. The creators deny that there is genocidal violence by Israel in Gaza.
Journalist Halbfinger: "I think the creators' goal was to bring to life the feelings ordinary Israelis experienced in connection with October 7. This involves anger and frustration, humiliation, and especially the desire for revenge."
According to the journalist, the creators wrote the new season in the months after the October 7 attacks. "The story therefore focuses very explicitly on the people seeking revenge and hardly on the consequences for the Palestinians."
Also popular in Arab countries
The series is incredibly popular not only in Israel. Strikingly, Fauda is also a hit in the Arab world. In Lebanon, the series was number one in the Netflix charts. Also in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and various other Arab countries, the series reached the top ten.
The Israeli documentary NAZA has also caused international uproar in recent weeks. In that film, Israeli soldiers anonymously tell how the Israeli army allows large numbers of civilian casualties in attacks on Gaza.
New York Times journalist Halbfinger thinks we will see many different narratives about the war. "NAZA shows a completely opposite view of Israel's warfare than Fauda. I am sure we will see other creative expressions as well."