How Fauda season five rewrites the Gaza genocide

How Fauda season five rewrites the Gaza genocide Submitted by Azad Essa on Mon, 09/14/2026 - 16:55 The Netflix series demonises French Muslims, ignores Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and erases Palestinian suffering Steve (Doron Ben-David) and Doron (Lior Raz) in Season Five of Fauda (Courtesy of Netflix) Off Earlier this month, the fifth season of the "successful" Israeli television series Fauda dropped on Netflix.

Within days, it climbed the charts, drawing audiences around the world - as it has done time and again - for its slickly produced tales of Israeli undercover units hunting down Palestinians.

Whereas all prior seasons were based in the occupied West Bank or in the besieged Gaza Strip, this time, the plot is centred in Marseille.

Lead protagonist Doron Kavillio (Lior Raz) is sent to persuade his best friend and former Mista'arvim colleague Eli (Yaakov Zada-Daniel) from carrying out an unauthorised assassination of a Hamas operative believed to have killed his wife and stepchildren on 7 October 2023.

But Doron is too late. A killing spree has already ensued and it's not long before the two men are chasing a Hamas cell led by a man named Saaed al-Khatib (Hakim Djaziri), known as "the Sinwar of Europe".

It turns out that a ragtag Hamas cell in Marseille, comprised of Palestinians and white Europeans, were preparing for another 7 October-style assault on Israel.

Naturally, our genius Israeli undercover agents stumble straight into it.

This sets in motion a familiar Fauda formula: duplicitous Palestinians, battle-hardened but reluctant Israeli killers and overwhelmed handlers back at Shin Bet "constrained" by cumbersome Israeli "democracy".

While the show's caricatures of Hamas and Palestinians remain firmly intact, it abandons any pretence about its place in the Israeli imagination. This is a revenge fantasy.

The show constructs a world in which Hamas seems to be everywhere, Europe has been compromised by Muslims and Israelis are perennially under siege. I watched Fauda's fifth season so you don't have to.

Here are its five defining themes.

Europe has been overrun by Muslims For a season ostensibly hinged on the 7 October 2023 attacks, the decision to make Marseille the source of a new threat towards Israel may appear surprising.

But among the more feverish myths amplified by the Israeli lobby as well as the right wing in Europe in recent years is that the continent has been overrun by large hordes of barbarous Muslims determined to dismantle its liberal, secular order and replace it with a set of hand-chopping, face-covering, gay-people-off-rooftops laws called Sharia.

Hollywood backs Israeli Netflix series 'Fauda' despite BDS boycott call Read More » In this telling, European cities have been balkanised into Muslim and non-Muslim enclaves, with so-called "no-go" areas where a certain Islamic medievalism has taken root.

Fauda dips readily into this large milieu of right-wing delusion by setting the story in Marseille.

The southern French city is home to a large Arab population, with Muslim-owned grocery stores, streets lined with pro-Palestine graffiti and an affection for the Palestinian cause.

If it can happen in Marseille, Fauda seems to say, it can happen anywhere in Europe, suggesting that the continent has surrendered its cultural identity and (even more absurdly) its political sovereignty to Muslims.

Or more plainly: Europe is gone.

Palestine solidarity is a gateway to terrorism When Doron and Eli discover the thriving Hamas cell based in a refugee community centre in Marseille, they also encounter white European activists preparing to strap on suicide vests for Hamas.

Explaining why these white Europeans felt compelled to blow themselves up for the Palestinian cause is apparently beyond the ambit of the show, so their recruitment is told through Anne Aubert (Melanie Laurent), an upper-class blonde French woman who joins Hamas to exact revenge on Israel after her husband, Maher (Carlos Gharzuzi), is killed by the travelling Israeli death squad.

Anne is shown to be driven singularly by the motive of revenge for her husband's murder.

Melanie Laurent as Anne Aubert and Lior Raz as Doron Kavillio (Courtesy of Netflix) Her decision, then, to take up arms against Israel and sacrifice her life is shown as bereft of any understanding of history, politics or context.

Here, Fauda portrays her as misinformed. She would later find out that her beloved, sweet, gentle husband was actually a barbaric Hamas commander who had raped Eli's wife and killed innocent Israelis on 7 October.

When she learns the "truth," she breaks down and gives the Israelis details of the plot. For her cooperation, she is set free.

But the message is unmistakable. Anne embodies every white liberal duped by Palestinian duplicity and savagery masquerading as decolonial struggle.

You don't know these Arabs as we do, Fauda seems intent on saying.

Hamas is everywhere As the bodies of Palestinians begin to pile up in Marseille, the French police and intelligence services quickly suspect that Israeli agencies may be behind the assassinations.

They launch an investigation, as police usually do. But French efforts to pursue justice are short-lived.

The Shin Bet use a Pegasus-style hacking tool to discover that the lead investigator was corrupt and in Hamas's pocket. Again, the insinuation is unambiguous.

Those attempting to constrain Israeli action are not motivated by law or justice. They are usually bankrolled by Hamas.

Hakim Djaziri (left) as Saeed al-Khatib, "the Sinwar of Europe", in Fauda (Courtesy of Netflix) This storyline serves as a handmaiden to the Israeli state's efforts to evade accountability.

The ICC, the ICJ, UN agencies and states such as South Africa have repeatedly been dismissed as biased, Hamas-aligned, or paid off by Hamas enthusiasts Iran.

Even Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has been accused of being a spokesperson for Hamas for her probing reports on Israel's occupation and genocide.

In Fauda's telling, no institution or body could legitimately seek to hold Israel to account unless it was tied to Hamas.

Erasing the genocide in Gaza Before the new terror plot is eventually defeated by Israeli heroics, the story turns to the events of 7 October as a memory.

Here, the writing, acting and reconstruction of the events acquire a pulse of their own.

The episodes slip interchangeably between truth and fiction, giving viewers a front-row seat inside the kibbutzim of southern Israel.

Hamas fighters are depicted as a thunderous, merciless force that arrived like a tornado devouring everything in sight.

The kibbutzim in contrast are depicted as comprising wholly innocent communities massacred by the eruption from beyond the fence. Why there was a fence and who those people were who came from beyond it was not important.

It is spectacularly choreographed propaganda, intended to reinforce the events of 7 October as a core memory of singular Israeli trauma. History itself begins on this day.

The show also draws on a broader sentiment that Israel's soldiers, police and intelligence services failed to protect Israelis - a failure that continues to haunt the country’s security establishment and forms a central pillar of season five.

Eli's decision to take matters into his own hands and pursue the Hamas operative in Marseille stems from this loss of faith in the system and its ability to uphold the social compact.

He cannot rest until his family - and, through them, the people of Israel, depicted as innocent, abandoned and denied justice - are avenged.

But this portrait of Israeli helplessness requires the story to erase everything that came after.

Season five was produced and filmed as Israel destroyed almost the entirety of the Gaza Strip, killing or injuring at least 250,000 Palestinians.

There is no reference to the bombardment in Gaza as a parallel fictitious plot is being dreamed up. The genocide is entirely absent.

It allows Israel to remain the victim. As an exercise in genocidal apologia, Fauda's reconstruction of 7 October has few equals.

In Fauda's universe, Gaza is already gone. Israel's genocide in Gaza Discover Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0