By Yonatan Simkovich, Staff Writer
The fifth season of Fauda has been a smashing success. In its first week, the hit show about a fictional counterterrorism unit in the Israeli military was Netflix’s fourth most popular non-English series and was streamed 2.1 million times worldwide. Fauda even soared to the #1 spot for Netflix in Lebanon, reached the #2 spot in Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain, and was a top 10 show in ten other countries in the Middle East besides Israel.
That a show produced in Israel has become so popular is unusual. That a show so explicitly Israeli, with combat scenes played by actors who fought in the IDF during the war, has become so popular is exceptional. Although Fauda presents the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and refuses to depict the region in shades of black and white, its producers still tell their story from an Israeli vantage point, which many producers are unwilling to do. Fauda’s popularity results from a strategy which the Israeli government refuses to use: Emotional appeals.
For the past three years, the strategy of Israeli hasbara has been to focus on informational warfare, fought with historical facts, maps, and infographics, an approach often criticized for being apathetic. After spending a year and a half researching Americans’ perceptions of Jews and Israel, Toba Hellerstein, former CEO of Texas-Israel Alliance, detailed her findings in an article for the Sapir Journal. “When asked about their impressions of Israelis and Israeli activists, Americans said they perceived them as ‘cold,’ ‘entitled,’ and ‘uncaring.’ It is neither the facts nor the feelings that are missing from Israel activism. What it requires, more than emotional intensity, is emotional attunement. Without such attunement, even the most factually airtight and morally impassioned argument fails to persuade.” These observations are understandable, as it sometimes seems that the Israeli government genuinely believes that a grim-faced, balding middle-aged general reciting “the IDF is the most moral army in the world” is the absolute pinnacle of persuasion. By failing to bring human feelings and storytelling to the podium, it becomes increasingly easier to dehumanize Israelis.
Enter Fauda.
Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, the producers of Fauda, have taken great care to let the characters become more than soldiers by giving viewers a window into the characters’ personal lives and inner turmoil. This allows for the Israeli narrative of the conflict to be told through emotional appeals to a world that responds to powerful feelings more than simple facts.
Its recently released fifth season was the first to come out after October 7, forcing the producers to find ways to navigate the struggles Israel has faced and incorporate them into the series. The season opens with Eli, a main character with family members who were murdered on October 7, learning that a high-ranking Hamas commander is in France and setting off to Europe to seek revenge. Knowing what he is going through yet determined to prevent Eli from endangering himself, Steve and Doron, who know Eli from spending years together in the same counterterrorism unit, try to intercept him before he puts himself in a situation too dangerous to handle. Though the plot revolves around their attempt to band together to stop a large-scale terrorist attack on Israel planned for Yom HaZikaron, the most important parts of the season are the seventh and eighth episodes, when viewers are transported back to October 7 from the main characters’ perspective. Fauda might be fictional, but its producers took great care to line up the filmed scenes with the real events of October 7. In foreign countries, where most people know the general details of October 7, experiencing it through emotional storytelling finally drove home the trauma which the Israeli government has spent so much time, effort, and money trying to convey. Multiple Twitter accounts from the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy and many others expressed their shock after watching the episodes. “The episodes of Fauda where the stories of October 7 are told are so heartbreaking that I was left trembling,” one Spanish user wrote. The Israelis being harmed on October 7 in Fauda have names, faces, and personalities, which push viewers to react to it more strongly than a news report of unnamed Israeli casualties.
Merav Ben-Ari, a Knesset member for the left-wing Yesh Atid party, reacted to the new season by criticizing the Netanyahu-led coalition for its role in Israel’s increased alienation. “What Fauda brings to viewers all over the world, this failed government hasn’t even come close to achieving at all. Every governmental office – foreign affairs, hasbara, public diplomacy – sits on millions. None of them has succeeded in the slightest at conveying the message to the world. On the contrary, this terrible government has turned the whole world against us.”
Ben Ari is not alone in faulting the Israeli government for the increasing number of foreign governments announcing sanctions, accusing Israel of genocide, and withdrawing diplomatic support. Shortly after Hersh Goldeberg-Polin’s body was returned to Israel, I found myself in a line of people wishing to express their condolences to his parents were sitting shiva, which stretched outside the tent and around the block, when I overheard some nearby Israelis discussing why they felt Israel has become increasingly unpopular. “Our diplomatic strategy has stayed the same for decades,” one said. “We don’t adapt, we have our head in the clouds. Another person disagreed, however. “Yes, it might be the case that our PR isn’t all that good, but there will always be people who hate us.” I silently agreed with her response – I don’t think antisemitism can be “stopped”. Israeli hasbara, however, must learn how to slow it down, and that means taking a page out of the Fauda handbook.
“Sabra”, a type of cactus, is often used by Israelis to refer to themselves as an expression of pride. By comparing themselves to a plant that is prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside, they try to portray themselves as toughened warriors who will fight for their country but also engage in acts of kindness, but “Sabra” also labels themselves as externally unfriendly and uncaring people. By relinquishing the “Sabra” mindset, Israelis can show their humanity not just in their daily lives, but also when the cameras are rolling. If Fauda can turn a fictional drama into content which humanizes Israelis, Israelis whose job is to create such content must remember that as Maya Angelou once said, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
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