Fauda: An Unflinching .. and Very Personal View of the Conflict in the Middle East

September 2026

 

Lior Raz is short, stocky, and bald...

 

And looks like my plumber...

 

So even though he has eyes than can bore right through you...

Usually right before he fills you full of lead...

 

He is an unlikely leading man...

For a series, Fauda...

That like the Lioness..

Deals with the activities of a counter terrorism unit ...

 

And then there is the very portly Itzhak Cohen...

The actor who was previously best known for bringing drag queens to Israel...

And now looks like someone who is going to have an heart attack any minute...

As his boss, Gabi...

 

So the Israeli series, Fauda...

Even though it deals with similar activities by a group of elite fighters...

Is nothing like the Lioness...

Its American counterpart...

 

No one is living in a million dollar house like Jo in the Lioness...

Or look like they could be in a GQ ad...like Cowboy Kyle...

None of the Israelis, even at the highest echelons...

Are wearing designer suits with Sex and the City heels like Kaitlyn..

 

In fact, the Israeli national uniform appears to be old t-shirts and jeans...

None of the wives look like they have spent much time in the gym...

Or would care to...

 

But, more importantly, the Israelis in this series are Mizrahi...

Jews from Arab countries...

And not the descendants of the European Jews who are usually associated with Israel...

 

They speak fluent Arabic...often at home...

Live in proximity with their Israeli Arab neighbors...

As they did before they immigrated to Israel...

And they look indistinguishable from the Arabs they are fighting...

 

Which means that the Arabs and the Jews in Fauda...

Move in and out of each other’s world...

As friends, spies, enemies... sometimes lovers...

 

And each other’s killers...

 

Which is what makes this such an interesting series...

 

It is not as overtly political as the Lioness...

No one says a word about Netanyahu... or any political party...

There are no speeches about geopolitics writ large...

Some of the Israeli fighters are religious... but most are not...

And Iran is barely mentioned...

 

For the Israelis in Fauda...

Theirs is not a fight in support of a particular ideology...

But rather one of survival...

 

And revenge...

 

And revenge hangs heavily over this series...

It is the motivating force for both the Arabs and the Jews...

 

Because for both of them...this war is very personal...

In ways it was not for the crew of the Lioness...

 

And the portrayal of the Arabs ...

Is more nuanced than one would expect...

 

Some are friends and neighbors...

Who are punished .. and sometimes killed by other Arabs...

Because they associate with the Jews...

Some...like leaders in the West Bank...

Want a peaceful co-existence...

And cooperate with the Israelis under the table...

 

Or to just to keep the grift going...

 

But many more are ideological...

 

And some like the Palestinian doctor, Shirin...

Are caught in the middle...

And forced to do horrible things..

To protect their family...

From both the Arabs and the Jews...

 

Because both sides play hardball...

They kidnap, threaten family members...

Innocents are often caught in the crossfire...

And family members are killed....sometimes deliberately...

 

So mostly what drives the plot each season is revenge..

For what each side is doing to the other...

 

Fauda does make the point that the West Bank is a very different world from Gaza..

Which is the wild west of terrorism in the Middle East...

 

But Fauda also travels to Lebanon, Syria...

 

And Europe...

Where the terrorists retreat when it gets too hot at home...

Regroup... and recruit...

 

And Season Five deals with Europeans of non-Arab descent...

Who join the cause...

And become terrorists...

 

But just as Jo’s riff on the patriotism that supposedly drives her in the Lioness...

Seems dated...

 

The French women chanting Allah Akbar...

As they strap on a suicide vest...

After being told they are about to enter the privileged ranks of a shahid...

Did not ring true...

 

Because they are not motivated by religion...

But rather by third worldism....

Yet Fauda does not probe that distinction very deeply...

 

It just makes these Europeans turned terrorists...

Look like innocents abroad...

Who are treated as useful idiots by Hamas...

 

Now Fauda, like the Lioness...

Is a showcase for surveillance technology...

And how tech in Israel, like the US...

Provides an advantage over one’s enemies...

 

But Fauda feels more authentic than the Lioness...

In part because main characters do get killed over the course of five seasons...

And not every action turns out as planned...

 

This is likely because showrunners for this series...

Lior Raz ...

Whose girlfriend was killed by a Palestinian terrorist when he was 19...

And Avi Issacharoff...

 

Were both in the special forces in the IDF...

 

So they have been there...

Know what really goes down...

And how it can impact someone personally...

 

Now Fauda began in 2015...and the first four seasons ended in 2020...

And in these earlier seasons...

The leaders of Hamas express the hope ...

For an attack similar to what happened on Oct 7...

 

Because they believe the Israelis will overreact to such an event...

Leading the other Arab countries and the Israeli Arabs to rise up and finally wipe Israel off the map...

 

Now Season Five does deal with Oct 7...

 

It begins with a focus on the families who lost loved ones...

And the grief and pain in Israel writ large...

 

Which was not confined to the Jews...

Because Arab Israelis were killed on that day, too...

And Season Five begins with one of them embarking on a mission of revenge...

 

But this season also shows that day...

 

How a family locked in safe room is initially nonchalant when the sirens begin...

Much as the Israeli government was before the attack...

But then you see the creeping horror on their faces as they realize what is about to happen to them...

As they come to the realization...

That what they had confidence in would protect them...

Cannot...

 

But the full scope of what happened to the Israelis on that day is where Fauda fails...

We see the deliberate targeting of women and children...

 

But not the atrocities...

The beheadings, the rapes, and families burned to death in their safe rooms and cars...

Which are only hinted at...

 

We just see piles of bodies...

 

So Fauda holds back...

 

Much like the Israeli government...

Which has refused to release...

To any but a select few...

The footage taken ...

Of what was done that day...

 

Why is explained at the end of the final episode of Fauda...

When an intelligence officer tells a subordinate...

“Self pity does not move us forward”...

 

And this brings to mind Hannah Arendt’s Eichman in Jerusalem...

Written over a half century earlier... when Israel was a young state...

 

What she saw there was the emergence of the Never Again Israel...

That rejected the mantle of the passive victim...

The image from the Holocaust...

Embraced by American Jews...

 

An instead took on that of the self-reliant Jew...

Who would never again allow itself to be a victim...

Which would require being aggressive in insuring survival...

 

Now Fauda does not follow what happened in Gaza after Oct 7...

Which was a result of this Israeli ethos...

Nor explore how that ethos has complicated their country’s standing in the world...

 

Because in the culture portrayed in this series...

And eye for an eye...

Is what rules the world...

Of both these Israelis and Arabs...

 

Which has trapped both of them in an endless cycle of violence...

 

And that is the key takeaway of this very fine series...

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

 

​

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

​

​

​​

 

​

​

​

​

 

                                                      

 

​

 

​​

​​

​​

​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

​​

 

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

 

​

​

 

​

 

​

​​

​

 

​

 

​

 

​

 

​​

 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

 

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

 

 

 

 

​

 

​

 

​

​

​

 

​

​

​

​

​

​​