Is there anything more painful and complex than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the show? How difficult is the objectivity stake, what kind of dramaturgy can describe the trauma, what screenwriters and actors would bear such a burden? In the case of the Israeli TV series Fauda, ​​which has just launched its fourth season on Netflix, the assassination looks like a risky game with fire and a journey to the hell we are being sucked into.

The recipe works because the show’s creators don’t just create compelling fiction, they talk about fresh raw material from their personal experience. Both the journalist Avi Isakarov and the actor Lior Raz experienced the dark maelstrom of this never-ending war. Raz even stars in the series as himself, as the character he plays is a member of an elite covert unit in the Israeli army, which he himself was in real life.

And while the action scenes are masterfully crafted and breathtaking, the dominant tone is set by a constant sense of insecurity, as if life is on a razor’s edge. Fauda is primarily a series of portraits of tragic characters, a group portrait of the “cursed” mistaaravim (Hebrew for “those who become Arabs”) spies who infiltrate the Palestinian population to fight terrorism. And they are tragic not only because they are doomed to plunge into an unending cycle of violence, but also because the old trauma of the Holocaust is faintly visible on their faces. They fear that an indescribable evil awaits them around the corner, and through their brotherhood, their unity as a warrior group and people, they find strength and protection from it.

These “Mistaaravim” characters have depth and seem completely real, as if they have flesh and blood – which also applies to those who represent the opposite side, the Arab side. Given that the series is Israeli, it is notable that the Arabs are presented in human form, which helps viewers automatically connect with them.

As expected, criticism for a lack of objectivity followed. To this, one of the creators, Avi Isakarov, replied that “this is just a series, not a political manifesto”, but also that “if the series were written by Palestinians, it would be written differently, but we are not Palestinians” . .

There is also an element in the series “Fauda” that immediately captivates the Greek viewer: everything that we see (and hear) in it seems familiar. Entering the homes, passions and lives of the heroes, we are constantly confronted with Greece. Shows, impressions – the blue of the sea, the olives of Palestine – all this is familiar to us. Israelis, Arabs and Greeks seem to be made of the same Mediterranean material, the same soil, the same light.

“Fauda in Arabic means chaos. “No matter how you look at it, Israelis and Palestinians are forced to do what they do.”

A conversation with a Greek who moved to Israel, journalist Achilleia Peclaris, a thirty-year-old traveler in the region and a five-year-old resident of Tel Aviv, confirms this impression. “Israelis, Arabs and Greeks are cousins, relatives – just like the Turks. Around the southeastern Mediterranean, they are almost the same people,” he tells us, delightfully adding: “If you take the main characters of the series and offer them to drink raki in a cafe in my village of Gavalochori in Chania, no one will turn to look at them. They will pass them off as local breeders!”

How did he personally experience the conflict between Israel and Palestine? “This is a routine of fear, hatred and slaughter of ordinary people, trapped for decades in a grim, dead-end reality that (with the help of fanatics and vested interests) is constantly fed and fed,” he writes. Tell us.

Are there “good guys” and “bad guys”? “No, this is not black and white, there are no heroes and villains,” Achilleas Peclaris will answer, continuing: “This is exactly the meaning of the word “fauda”, which in Arabic means “chaos”. No matter how you look at it – be it the Israeli characters of the show or the Palestinians – they are all trapped and forced to do what they do. And this is a harsh image in the eyes of the Israeli and Palestinian audience. In a related Greek series with Greeks and Turks as “enemies”, where in some episode we see the mother of a murdered Turk in mourning, and shortly before that, her son killed ten Greeks, can we see her point of view? Would we be touched by her pain?

When asked how he sees the continuation of the conflict between the two peoples, he replies: “It will be perpetuated as long as the marginalization of fanatics and mutual understanding between moderates with the goal of a “two-state solution” remain. have not reached. While neither side can imagine anything but the eternal continuation of the conflict, the vast majority would agree to a just peace settlement. Because in the series “Fauda” and in the reality that it represents, there are no winners and losers. There is only bereavement and mourning.”

The latest, fourth cycle of the series “Fauda” (“Chaos”) was released on Netflix on 20/11.