Fauda creator defends ignoring Gaza in Season 5

Avi Issacharoff, a creator of the Israeli series Fauda, has said the show's fifth season was built around the October 7 Hamas attacks and deliberately avoided showing Gaza. In an interview in Jerusalem, he described the season as a mission to tell the story of what happened to Israelis, saying some people in Israel were trying to forget the attacks. The attacks claimed one of his crew.

Season 5 has been a hit, but it has also drawn criticism for barely touching on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. Asked why he did not show that suffering, Issacharoff said a scriptwriter could not write about Gaza while the war was still unfolding. 'So we pulled a kind of a very old trick, meaning we ignored Gaza,' he said, adding: 'Completely, we ignored Gaza completely.' The season instead moves to another front in Europe and shows Hamas efforts to build infrastructure there.

The interviewer noted that the Israeli government and the IDF have been keen to stop journalists entering Gaza and telling the story of its people, and asked whether the show was playing the same game by dehumanising Palestinian suffering. Issacharoff said he did not doubt that the season ignored Gaza and skipped the suffering of the other side, but said he had to focus on the Israeli side. He argued that most of the world lacks understanding of what happened to Israelis, while the Palestinian side was widely understood. He also rejected accusations of genocide and said some stories about the conflict were not true, claims he linked to what he called a narrative promoted by some Palestinians, mainly Hamas and its supporters in Europe.

He said every Israeli who lived through October 7 was suffering some form of post-traumatic stress. He also said he hoped a future season could deal with peace between Israelis and Arab states, and between Israelis and Palestinians, but he did not expect that in the next few years. He criticised political corruption in Israel and said he was not a fan of the prime minister. He described reports that people in the prime minister's office had collaborated with the Qatari government, which supports Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, as a blow.

On the show's reach, he said Fauda was popular in Arab countries including Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Lebanon. He called that a miracle and said it suggested viewers on the other side could see the suffering of Israelis. He also noted that half the programme's language is Arabic and that actors such as Lior Raz are popular in the region. He said some Lebanese might affiliate with Israel more than with Hezbollah.