CULTURE CURRENT-Avi Issacharoff on how ‘Fauda’ grapples with October 7

Since its Netflix debut in 2016, the Israeli thriller “Fauda” (or “chaos” in Arabic) has won global audiences for its portrayal of a special operations unit in the Israeli military's Mista'arvim unit, whose members go undercover in Palestinian ​society in pursuit of militant targets. Although the show has long taken inspiration from real-life events (including a season three plot mirroring the 2006 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit into ​Gaza), the show’s co-creator Avi Issacharoff says its latest season — centred around the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas in southern ‌Israel and the ​Israeli assault on Gaza that followed — is its most personal yet. One of the show’s crew members was killed while serving in the Israeli military in Gaza, while another was injured. For many Israelis, Issacharoff says, October 7 remains “an open wound.”

Speaking at his home in Tel Aviv, Issacharoff discusses his decision to write a season around October 7, the boycotts facing Israeli art and cultural institutions, and the show’s unexpected popularity among Arab viewers. The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Where were you on October 7 and what do you remember from that day? I mean, you ‌cannot forget a day like that. It's a trauma, a national trauma. It's not a personal one. I was at home, and my daughter woke me up (at) 6:29 a.m. and said, "Abba, there are alarms.” We went to the safe room, and after a while, I open up Al Jazeera — I speak fluent Arabic — and then I saw Muhammad Deif, head of (the) Hamas military wing, declare war on Israel and asking Hezbollah, the (Palestinians in the) West Bank, and the Israeli Arabs to join in and to fight against the Zionist entity. It took a few more hours to understand how big the catastrophe (was).

The latest season of “Fauda,” which centres around the October 7 attack and its aftermath, has seen large viewership in the Arab world. What do you make of its popularity? Lebanon, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates — so many different places ‌that love "Fauda” in the former seasons. The thing that we didn't expect was that this season will succeed because of October 7; we would have expected that less people would watch an Israeli show. What's the explanation? I don't have a good idea. I mean, other than it's a good TV show. It's a good drama, and maybe it's curiosity about the other ‌side. People want to understand better how did Israelis deal with October 7. Maybe it's the inter-junction between the two that made it popular.

How do you see the season’s success juxtaposed to the recent premiere of the Israeli documentary NAZA and rhetoric around it? Have you seen it? I haven't seen it, so I cannot really answer this. I mean, I don't know what kind of a film this is. I don't know nothing.

Do you think "Fauda" is playing the role of improving Israel’s global image? We're not part of an effort by the Israeli state. We're not connected to the state of Israel, the government of Israel, (in) any way. Let's be clear about that.

We want to tell a story, a story that was burning in our heart. It was there on the first, second, third, and fourth seasons, but even more after the national trauma that we all suffered. I don't want to be part of the hasbara (Israeli PR) effort. This is not the mission. I ⁠guess this is one ​of the secrets of the success — it's something that really burns in our hearts and not part of ⁠an effort to explain. No, we want to show a story. Some people have criticised the show for playing into stereotypes about Arabs in this season. What do you say to that?

Not in this season because we focus way more on European characters, white Europeans that were recruited by Hamas. So I don't think that we generalize Arabs or Muslims. The opposite. At the beginning of the show, one of the so-called good guys is a Muslim Bedouin (whose) son was killed ⁠on October 7. Some Arabs were killed or kidnapped into Gaza during October 7. So I don't think that we generalize Arabs. We show many aspects, many different people. How does it feel these days to be an Israeli artist in the world, given calls for boycotts against Israeli artists and institutions?

Look, it's sad. It's very sad that (the) Israeli creative community is being (met with) a kind of a cold shoulder. I cannot really complain because my show is ​very successful. But it's way more complicated today to create something that deals with Israeli content than it used to be four years ago. And again, the reason that it all started wasn't because Israel was the aggressor, but because Hamas decided to commit genocide in Israel, and not the opposite way around. (Editor's note: Hamas has denied an Amnesty International ⁠finding that it committed crimes against humanity during the October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage. Israel faces accusations of genocide in Gaza, where Palestinian authorities estimate more than 73,000 people have been killed, including from a UN Commission of Inquiry and in a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. Israel rejects them.) But again, Lior Raz, my partner, and I are continuing with our mission of bringing more good content to the world. ⁠It's ​not stopping us, and it's not even slowing us. It's a challenge, but we like challenges, and we're dealing with challenges almost every day. And it's part of the fun because if it's too easy, it's not that fun.

The destruction in Gaza is absent from this season of “Fauda.” Why make that choice? We were shooting "Fauda” while the war was still going on. We were writing the fifth season while the war was still going on. You don't know how will it end. You don't know what's going to be the landscape, the human landscape — how Gaza is going to look like physically. You cannot really gamble on the end result of the war, so we kind of ran away from Gaza. We focus on Europe and then Syria, and then the West Bank ⁠instead.

The second aspect is production-wise, can you shoot something that resembles the current Gaza somewhere in Israel? Definitely not, unless you're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in order to make it. And yes, what you were hearing us saying is that we wanted to focus on October 7 and the Israeli side and what happened to Israel as a nation, as ⁠a society. With the Palestinians, I'm sure that there will be plenty of TV shows and movies that ⁠will deal with what happened to them. For example, NAZA. But for me, it was very important to tell our story, my story, the trauma that we suffered.

Did you intend for the season to come out ahead of elections in Israel? It wasn't intended to come out now. I mean, this is Netflix's decision to air it now, following some kind of an agreement with (Israeli broadcaster) Yes. What we wanted to do in the show is to make people remember. This is a catastrophe that happened here that changed the face of the Middle East. And you cannot forget October ‌7, because people here are trying to make us forget it and ‌focus on other stuff, and especially people outside of Israel that are trying to change history and start with the end result of the catastrophe.

The perspectives expressed in Culture Current are the subject’s own ​and do not necessarily reflect the views of Reuters News. (Editing by Yasmeen Serhan and Rosalba O'Brien)