The season TV drama Fauda never wanted to make

Matan Meir would never have expected to see his name in The Hollywood Reporter. A longtime member of Fauda’s production team, he was hugely valued but knew that it is only the names in big type on the credits that matter. That changed tragically on November 11, 2023, when Matan, 38, a reservist in the 551st Brigade’s 697th Battalion, was killed in Gaza. Suddenly the Fauda man behind the scenes made the headlines.

Idan Amedi made them too. A star singer-songwriter in Israel, internationally he is Fauda’s Sagi, the impulsive but romantic member of Mista’arvim – the elite undercover counterterrorism unit. But, in January 2024, it was Idan who was severely burned and wounded by shrapnel from an explosion in Gaza that killed six of his fellow reservists – two of them close friends from early army days.

Idan told Fauda producers his extensive rehabilitation meant withdrawing from Season Five. And it’s against this backdrop of loss and profound sorrow that Fauda returns – a drama forced to confront a reality more terrible than anything its creators thought they could write. 

And they did think about it. Together, co-creators Avi Issacharoff, 53, and star Lior Raz, 54, who plays brooding warrior Doron Kabilio, discussed a storyline in which terrorists breached the Gaza border and seized an Israeli community. 

Lior thought it was the worst thing that could happen to Israel. Avi simply rejected it as “not realistic”. He tells me the discarded storyline has haunted him ever since as we discussed the season I have already watched and can’t forget.

Fans – of which Fauda has many – hate spoilers and Avi knows this. But spoiler is a tasteless term for a season of heartbreak with two dedicated episodes about the horror of October 7, which carry an advisory warning. This naturally raises the question: should they have been made at all?

“There was a debate. An ongoing debate,” says Avi. “Maybe it’s too early. Maybe we cannot show stuff that refers to October 7 because of the sensitivity; because of the people who were killed, the families and residents of Gaza’s periphery.

“But, at the end of the day, we thought it was too important. Fauda is not the typical TV show. It’s an action drama, but very much based on reality. You must be in a dialogue with this huge event that changed the face of the Middle East for good and bad. So, you can’t ignore it. It’s not the elephant in the room. It’s a herd of elephants in one room.”

Fauda Season Four ended with Doron, Sagi, Eli (Yaakov Zada-Daniel), Steve (Doron Ben-David) and Shani (Inbar Lavi) grievously wounded after a firefight in Jenin. Viewers were left not knowing who would survive.

Season Five opens two years after October 7 with a broken Doron having PTSD therapy, so while fast-forwarding the Oct 7-dedicated episodes seven and eight is an option – don’t. The plot moves seamlessly to episode nine while the recreation of Israel’s darkest day is tough – and more so than other October 7 dramas because we know the characters. It also extracts extraordinary performances from a cast accustomed to emotional extremes, although to single out individuals would reveal too much. In a world more predisposed towards Israel, Fauda would get every award.

Avi takes the compliment with a half-smile. He is calm and controlled. The weight of what we’re discussing has me stumbling over my words. His composure is borne of experience. He has reported on the Middle East for more than a quarter of a century and, like Lior, served in the Israel Defense Forces’s undercover counterterrorism unit Duvdevan, where his fluency in Arabic proved invaluable. 

Avi completed his MA in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and his books on the Second Intifada and Lebanon took him deeper into the conflict.

Decades spent talking to Palestinians – including Hamas leaders and militants – forged relationships that not only informed Fauda’s Arab characters, but allowed him to see the humanity in people he regarded as enemies. Which is why October 7 was beyond anything even he could process.

“I couldn’t believe that even Hamas were capable of the atrocities they committed. I was naive to believe that they would follow the rules of Islam, meaning respecting the laws of war, the laws of hostages and prisoners of war.”

“What I found is that people inside Hamas, and those who were part of the mob looting Gaza’s periphery, didn’t have any kind of human aspect to them. They were just coming to slaughter Jews. But they also slaughtered Muslims… and foreigners from Nepal, from Thailand. What is their connection to the conflict? What is this?”

Two days after the attack, Lior and Avi headed south with former Israeli politician and special forces officer Yohanan Plesner to “the bombarded town of Sderot to extract two families”, as Lior wrote on Instagram, posting footage of rockets overhead.

Lior has spoken since about how one terrified family opened its door to find the Fauda star standing there. They looked at him and said: “Doron.” “No, it’s Lior,” he replied. “And now it’s real. This is the real deal.”

The story gets laughs when Lior tells it, but this chilling collision of Fauda and reality would define Season Five.

Another defining aspect is the season’s core theme – tha’r (ثأر) Arabic for blood revenge. Into this fauda (פאודה) chaos in Hebrew – comes Mélanie Laurent. Best known as Shosanna Dreyfus in Inglourious Basterds, the French-Jewish actress and film-maker told director Quentin Tarantino that she wanted the role because “I want to kill Hitler”. 

The symbolism of her Fauda casting is inspired, as Avi knows. “But we wanted to take her in a completely different direction. Meaning being part of the ‘bad guys’ side.”

Deliberately subversive, instead of seeking Nazi vengeance, Mélanie, as Anne Aubert, is a Frenchwoman living in Marseille married to a Palestinian, who she loves. 

“She represents the kind of naive woke generation in Europe,” explains Avi. “You know… the ones with the slogans ‘Free, free Palestine, la la la… It’s cool, you know.”

Mélanie didn’t need much persuading to join Fauda. She and Lior had talked about it for years. “So when he mentioned Season Five would feature a French woman, I’m like, ‘Who are you gonna take?’” she recalls, sitting beside Lior. “And then, literally, it happened in three minutes when I yelled at him and the deal was done.”

According to Avi – who resists speaking on Mélanie’s behalf – she really liked Tel Aviv. But filming there coincided with the Iranian attacks. Becoming close friends while making the Netflix films 6 Underground and Operation Finale, Lior extended an invite. 

“I told her, ‘Come stay with us.’ I thought there’d be one or two explosions and that would be the end of it,” says the actor, who was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodyguard after his military service. “Mélanie ended up living with us for about a month. Every day we went to the safe room, and every Friday I made kiddush. I think it was the first time in her life she experienced kiddush.”

Interviewed on set, an emotional Mélanie said, “He protected me… like Doron.” Of her character Anne, little can be said beyond her life not being what it seems, which sets her off in search of “truth and revenge”. Mélanie encapsulates the connecting thread of Season Five.“We have one thing in common in the season: it’s grief. I think the season is about grieving a lot of things.”

That grief is felt by Avi. The storyline he dismissed. The conversations that took place in Israel before October 7.  “Just before the massacre, the talk was about whether to allow more Palestinians from Gaza to go into Israel to work. Can we reach some kind of compromise or temporary ceasefire with Hamas? Yes or no?’ That was the debate. We weren’t aware that what Hamas had in mind was a genocide, eliminating every Israeli that got in the way – men, women or children.”

It’s hard to move on, but we do and he tells me scriptwriting now takes precedence – behind him is a poster of Hit and Run, the 2021 Netflix series, created with and starring Lior. Avi, a former Arab affairs correspondent for Haaretz, will never abandon journalism, and his politics are widely known.

“I’m the last one to be supportive of my government. They have made terrible mistakes; I don’t like this government, and I hope that there will be a change here, a shift in Israel soon.

“But having said that, any other government that would have dealt with October 7 would have done the same, if not worse,” he says, although he considers that another government might have pursued a political and diplomatic process that produced a different reality in Gaza rather than, as he puts it, acting “so stupidly” as Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.

Avi is equally emphatic about separating Hamas from the religion it invokes. “There is a great Islam and a very kind and liberal Islam. It’s not Hamas. It’s not Muslim Brotherhood. People don’t get it. People don’t understand the difference.” 

He points to Hamas’s violent conflict with Fatah and the Brotherhood’s clashes with other Arab governments. “They are a threat to Arab nationalism, to secular Arab liberals.”

Avi and Lior knew each other in Jerusalem, then became writing partners. “We are family,” he says of them now, dismissing anything less. That sense of family extends to the Fauda ensemble, which has always depended on Arab as well as Jewish actors. Nazareth-born Hisham Suliman, who played Season One’s Abu Ahmad – The Panther – is one. But Season Five asked something very different of its Arab cast.

“Those who came did so very strongly, believing they were doing the right thing,” says Avi. “Even though they’re playing terrorists, they knew their message is that what Hamas did on that day was wrong, terrible, and something the world cannot allow to happen again. Not for Jews, non-Jews, Israelis or non-Israelis.”

Avi’s willingness to cross the divide leads us to a story I’d read about him. A meeting with Palestinian Baha Nababta, a community activist at Shuafat refugee camp in 2015. Baha watched Fauda and when Avi told him he wrote it, was surprised how impressed Baha was, telling others in the camp. 

I asked if Baha would watch Season Five. Avi shook his head. “Less than a year later he was murdered by armed Palestinians in the camp. This is part of the chaos.” It’s a shocking answer, but Avi continues: “Would Baha still be one of the fans? Yes, he’d have watched all five seasons. Definitely.”

Finally, I ask if Season Five can break through the lies and deliver the truth about October 7 to the millions of  fans globally?

Avi doesn’t hesitate. “Don’t be naïve. You think that watching Fauda would change their perspective or thoughts about the Middle East and what happened here on October 7? They will watch it and say, ‘Oh, come on, it’s the Zionist propaganda.’”

For once, I pray Avi Issacharoff has got it wrong.

Fauda is on Netflix from 8 September