How Fiction Will Remember October 7 - with Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff

0:00Quick note before we start. Big things are coming to ARK Media. Somewhere in the small gaps of time between putting out three episodes each week, we've been secretly working on something we think all our listeners are going to be really excited about. We're announcing everything live on October 5th. If you want to be the first to hear about it, RSVP to our virtual announcement event. You can find the sign-up link in the show notes. See you there.

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0:34today we will hear a conversation with Lior Raz and Avia Sakharov about the new season of FAUDA and the audiences it has reached which especially after the past three years would have seemed impenetrable but I couldn't help but think that we may have just witnessed what could be the basis for the next season of FAURA. Before a conversation, which I recorded a few days ago, I wanted to share a few thoughts on the dramatic events of the past 24 hours. Imagine you're on a routine three-hour flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. There are numerous flights like this every single day back and forth. It's a Wednesday morning, the fifth day of Sukkot.

1:12Your kids are in the seats next to you. And then the plane starts falling out of the sky. That's what happened to the passengers of Fly Dubai Flight 1073. Had the attack been successful, it would have been the worst attack against Jews since October 7th, 2023. Archimedia contributor Amit Segel wrote in the Free Press today that this is the first time in more than 20 years that someone has tried to hijack a plane bound for Israel. He describes the whole region holding its breath as the flight sent out an emergency signal, flashed the hijack code and seemed to veer off course over Saudi airspace.

1:54The co-pilot had stabbed the captain repeatedly, taken the controls and pointed the plane at the ground. It dropped over 17 ,000 feet in just over one minute. One passenger said she was certain everyone would die and she sent goodbye messages to her parents. And then something miraculous happened. Someone from the cabin managed to get into the cockpit and threw the co-pilot out, as three others jumped on him and tied him up with the cables of the airline headphones. The plane had an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. And then on the way home, Israelis on board were heard singing, Rabbi Nachman's Kol HaOlam Kulo.

2:38The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And the main thing is not to be afraid. Younger listeners may need some context to make sense of the past 24 hours. Between 1968 and 1976, Palestinian terror groups carried out or attempted 16 hijackings and a similar number of other aviation attacks, including strikes on El Al targets in Athens, Brussels, Istanbul, and Rome. Their goals were always to isolate Israel, reach a global audience, and terrify Israelis. And as Amit Segel writes, they succeeded. Entebbe in 1976 actually ended that era by showing the West an alternative to capitulation. And once a rescue became credible, hijacking was a far worse bet.

3:28So what are the lessons we've learned so far from today? Well, there are probably many, but three that jumped out at me are, one, it wasn't the long arm of the Israeli military apparatus or intelligence services that played a major role here. In fact, not really any role. It was civilians, many of whom had military training, but they organized themselves as civilians and took action. Two, the attacker may have been aiming at the UAE-Israeli alliance itself. And three, the Saudi dimension, the Saudi medics treating the Israeli passengers, the plane landing in Saudi Arabia shows how far we've come on a path to normalization and yet how far there is still to go.

4:12Each of these topics will be addressed in episodes on Call Me Back in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, please be sure to check out the latest episode of ARC News Daily. Now on to the episode we recorded with Leo Arnavi a few days ago. It's not like season one, two, three, four. It's something else. Now there's a real story, a real event that when you follow the real events, you got to be very careful about what you do. And I felt like that there's a shlichut, that there's a mission here to tell a way bigger story than, you know, just another season of Fauda. We knew that we had to tell our truth Because you hear so many stories People trying to say that the October 7th wasn't real That it was some army things, a war No, we wanted to show to the world This is what happened

5:14it's 9 a.m on sunday september 27th here in new york city it's 4 p.m on sunday september 27th in israel as israelis begin to wind down their day for more than a decade fauda has done something very few Israeli cultural exports have ever managed to do. It has taken an intensely local conflict and turned it into a Hebrew-speaking global phenomenon. The new season, Season 5, released globally earlier this month, reached Netflix's top 10 in dozens of countries. It rose to number one in Lebanon, while also charting across Jordan, the UAE, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the region. But this season is different.

5:58Two episodes take FAUDA directly into October 7th, placing its fictional characters inside events that actually happened just shy of three years ago. And in doing so, they are entering a much larger process that is only just beginning. Films, television series, novels, plays, eventually October 7th will exist not only as something people experienced, but as something millions of people who were never there will encounter only through stories. And that raises a difficult question. How do you turn history into fiction when it barely feels like history yet? When survivors are still living with what happened?

6:39When families are still grieving? When the facts themselves remain politically contested? When almost every creative choice, whose story you tell, whose suffering you show, what you leave out, can become part of how the event is ultimately remembered? We often think that history produces stories, but stories also produce history. Think about Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, The Hurt Locker. For people who did not experience the events themselves, a film or television series can become the memory. So how do you dramatize October 7th without exploiting it? How much license can fiction take with something this traumatic?

7:19And what responsibility comes with knowing that your version of the story may travel much farther than the historical record itself. This is what we're going to talk about today with the creators of FAUDA, Lior Raz and Avi Isikarov. My conversation with them right after this short message. This message is sponsored by the Israel Democracy Institute. Every election cycle in Israel is accompanied by the words, this is the most consequential election in history. It's become a cliche. But this time, it may actually be true. As followers of Israeli politics, you know how hard it can be to distill the issues from partisan spin, to go behind the headlines to understand what's really going on.

8:03If you enjoy the kind of thoughtful, fact-based conversations we have on this podcast, I think you'll appreciate the work of the Israel Democracy Institute, IDI, a leading nonpartisan center of research and action. IDI offers practical proposals for strengthening Israeli democracy and clear, accessible analysis of the biggest challenges facing the Jewish state. Their explainers on everything from Israel's electoral system to the ultra-Orthodox draft make complex issues easier to understand. And their regular polling and public opinion research are among the best tools available for tracking where Israeli society is moving in real time.

8:42As Israel heads towards a pivotal election, regardless of where you stand politically, IDI is an essential resource for making sense of what's at stake and where the country may be headed after the votes are counted. To learn more, visit elections.idi.org.il forward slash 2026 or follow the link in the show notes.

9:09Lior, Avi, welcome to Call Me Back. Thank you, Dan. Hi, Dan. Great to be with you guys, both of you joining me from Tel Aviv. Lior, I'm going to start our conversation with the two episodes that dramatize the morning of October 7th. They were devastating to watch. That's where the line between fiction and nonfiction and the lines between reality and memory completely blurred. How did you go about restructuring that day? So first of all, when October 7 happened, it was a shock for all of us. We were devastated. We didn't know what to do. In Israel, we all, we didn't know what happened to us and how it could happen to us.

9:55This is crazy situations. And when Avi and I started to write the fifth season of Fauda, we couldn't ignore October 7. We thought that in the beginning when we had a plan to write something else, But then October 7 happened. And then we decided that you cannot do anything without October 7. For us, it's such a major event in our life. It's a trauma that we cannot even express to the world. We couldn't. And then we decided that we need to write something about it. And we knew that it's going to be out. We knew that everything, that people will see it in Israel and outside of Israel. And then how do you write something about it when it's still very fresh?

10:36We started to write the show immediately after October 7, and the show happening three years after October 7 these days. So we had to imagine what will happen after October 7. And this is how we started to write. And we knew that we have a responsibility to the world and to show the story that we all had, we all got affected by. It wasn't easy because how you tell a story of such a big event, such a huge event for the Israelis, for the Jewish nation, how do you tell this story? and we decided to tell the story through the characters that everybody knows and through their emotional journey, what happened to them on those days, in this day, where they were, what happened to them.

11:18So for us, it was much easier. And I think to the audience as well, to understand what happened in October 7, because they went through with Doron that they know for so long, with Ellie that they know for 10 years already. All the viewers, the people who watch Fauda, they all know those characters very, very well. So if you put those characters in October 7, they will understand much better what happened to all of us in Israel in this day. And Lior, just to kind of set the context, I just want to spend a very quick moment on this. You learned about October 7, obviously from the images, but also your sister was living in a kibbutz in the south, right, in the Gaza envelope, and she had reached out to you.

11:57Yeah, she went just for the weekend to this kibbutz Erez. I was in Romania when October 7 happened. Right. And I woke up with a phone call of my sister saying that there is an attack and she needs me to come and save her. And she's with knives inside the shelter. And I didn't understand what she's talking about. It was crazy for me to wake up with this call. And she said immediately, just watch what's happening in the news. And I opened TV and what we saw was devastating. So October 7 was a shock for me. it was because I didn't have the ability to go and save my sister as well. She's okay. She managed to run away with her son.

12:32But for me, it was the hardest thing to understand that I cannot do anything until I went back the day after. Okay. Avi, war films, as I mentioned in the introduction and TV series like Band of Brothers and other shows typically come out years and years, sometimes decades after the wars ended. October 7th is still a living trauma for Israelis. How do you dramatize something that for many of your viewers has not yet become history it's something they're either actually living while you're in the writer's room writing this or there's just still ptsd by the time the show comes out so this is part of the conversation that we were having part of the dilemma because we knew at the end of the day that you know many people are still there in the trauma not even in the post-trauma but inside the trauma living it breathing it and how can you deal with stuff like that?

13:25How can you deal with knowing that, you know, 1 ,200 families lost their son or daughter or relative or whatever? 251 people were taken to Gaza, kidnapped by Hamas. And while we were starting to write the fifth season, they were still there, meaning the hostages, most of them were still there. And then what do you do exactly? Like, what can you show? what can you write about, what you cannot. Maybe this is something too much of, you know, touching not even the scar, it's an open wound. So how can you touch this open wound without really damaging it, damaging the body or the soul of the people that suffer too much and the people that were living in Israel?

14:09And for us, you know, it's a nation and a trauma. It's a nation, not even in a post-trauma. It's still there. We're breathing it. We're living it. I guess that each and every one of us is carrying some kind of memory from October 7th. And we knew that while we are going to do something, two episodes about October 7th, it's going to raise the trauma again. It's going to show the trauma, not only to people all around the world, but to people that were really living and breathing the trauma. Lior, what was the hardest decision you guys had to make about what to show and what not to show? Trying to be a fly on the wall in the writer's room when you guys are thinking this through, like, ooh, that's going too far, that's too close to the bone, we can't do that.

14:52It wasn't just in the writer's room, it also was on set, because while we were shooting those devastating scenes, so let's take this as an example. There was a rape, terrorists raped Israeli women in the party, outside of the party, in the kibbutzim. How much do you allow yourself to show? So we decided to do it in a very delicate way, if you can say that about what you've seen there, but you see blood under skirts. You see when the terrorists take Eli's wife to the room, you don't see that. You see him take her to the room, but you don't see what he does to her in the room. Exactly. But you know what he does in the room.

15:34Exactly. You know exactly what's going to happen there. But on the other way, there was two scenes. there were very hard scenes that every Israeli knows about. One, it was the container that people in the party were hiding in a container. Yeah, like a big dumpster, like a big garbage container. Yeah. And the kids who had escaped the Nova Festival, there's a scene where they're hiding in this big container. Yeah, and I'm climbing there and they're all dead. Yeah. So it was like 20, 30 dead kids over there. And it really happened. It really happened, meaning you guys were recreating something that actually occurred.

16:09Yeah. And also there was the Migunit scene. How do you say Migunit? It was a shelter, like a mobile shelter. Kind of a safe place. Yeah. Yeah. A shelter on the side of the road, right, where there's a bunch of the kids from the Nova Festival hiding in there. By the way, when I saw that scene, I was thinking of where Hirsch Goldberg Poland was taken hostage from, where Anna Shapiro was killed. I've been to that actual shelter. That was the immediate thing I thought of when I watched that scene. So was that trying to recreate those kinds of scenes that you knew actually occurred. Yeah. And you can see it also in our faces as actors who going into this place and going out from this place, you can see it in our eyes that the acting and the reality are very, you don't understand what's acting and what's reality.

16:54And you can see it in those two episodes. All of the team, the actors were so deep inside the situation that I'm standing there after I did what I did in the Nova Festival. And you see in my eyes that it's real. I wasn't acting. I was really inside of this situation. Like my friends, we were all part of this scene that you're saying that sometimes you shoot movies or TV shows 20 years, 10 years after it happened. For us, it was so real because it was like a year ago, two years ago, and we were leaving it. so as an actor and this is why it's so hard and so bleeding this two episodes you feel that you are inside of it you know the question is how graphic can you be how you know what's the body count that you can show how many dead bodies how many times can you repeat that the rape as leo mentioned there's a dilemma here it's in the writer's room it's during the production and it's in the editing room because usually you shoot more than you show of of course, and then comes the discussion.

18:00What should we show? What shouldn't we? Can we show the kids being shot or not? And of course, the answer was no. We don't need to show the kids being shot. We don't need to show many of the things that happen in reality, though. Some people that, you know, their head was beheaded, or some body organs that were cut by machetes. And by the way, we insisted on showing a sword, a machete, that Hamas Nuchba people were carrying with them. Why? Because we understood through a research that we've done for the show. Each and every Hamas member that was part of the invasion into Israel on October 7th took with them not only an AK-47 and a hand grenade or RPG, but also a mashet, a sword.

18:42And that brings the question of why on earth would a terrorist with an AK-47 invade a kibbutz or a town with a huge sword on his back? And that's real. And I have to emphasize this. Almost each and every scene that you see in those two episodes, seven and eight, how Taken are inspired by true events, starting from the starting point in which Eli gets the phone call around 3 a.m. And, you know, the Shin Bet tells him, get ready. We need you to come as a kind of what they're calling tequila force. Tequila force was the unit that Israel deployed to the border, obviously, before they knew the scale of the invasion.

19:19It's an intervention team for the Shin Bet. Yeah. It's a kind of a SWAT team of the Shinbet with the Imam that were sent early in the morning, the police anti-terror unit that are working with the Shinbet together. And they were sent there because the Shinbet and the army had some kind of an intelligence that something is happening on the border. They didn't know what is happening. So this is why they sent the first team. And this is why we show Eli going there. Then, of course, the Bedouin guy that was murdered there. Then you have the junction, the junction with the police and all of it and the kibbutz.

19:53And each and every event that you see in those two episodes, including the old man on the roof in the kibbutz that is shooting some Hamas people, it's taken from real stories that happened there. So every one of those details, I just want to be clear on this, every one of those details that you show, you could trace to actual incidents or events, as horrific as they are, that actually occurred on October 7th? The major events, yes. You definitely can connect them to real events that happened on the ground. Okay. And did you, and it's a question for both of you, did you feel a different level of responsibility writing this season?

20:33I mean, you've written four seasons before, and did you just feel like a heavier sense of the stakes with this episode was going to be, I mean, I was looking at when season four. So season four, the season before this one, was released in Israel in July of 2022, and it was released globally on Netflix in January of 2023. So some nine months or something before October 7, 2023. so events in the region in the middle east in israel among its immediate neighbors things are always tense and the stakes are always you know one could argue are high but when this season when you got went to work on this season you had to know the stakes were way higher what kind of sense of responsibility did you feel when you were writing i feel that you know for us it was the most important thing that we've done in our work in our job as you know script writers as creators as a journalist, as whatever.

21:28For me, at least, and I think that Theo agrees with me about that, you understand that this is something way bigger than just another TV show, okay? It's not like season one, two, three, four. It's something else. Now there's a real story, a real event, that when you follow the real events, you've got to be very careful about what you do. And I felt like that you have kind of a sacred mission in a way. Almost, you know, the guy in the synagogue, the chazan that reads the prayer. So it's called Shaliyah Tzibu. And I think that for me, at least, I felt that there's a shlichut, that there's a mission here to tell a way bigger story than, you know, just another season of Fauda.

22:09Lior? It was bigger than us. The story was bigger than us. This is something that we had to do. It wasn't even a question. It was a mission for us. We knew that it will affect people. First of all, we thought about the people in Israel. And then we thought about people outside of Israel. This is why there was a disclaimer before episode seven and eight in Israel. It could trigger you guys. You don't have to watch those two episodes if you feel that it will traumatize you. So you can skip it and go through the episode nine. Don't watch it. So for us, it was a huge responsibility. We felt that we have in the atmosphere now in the world much more.

22:49With this atmosphere, we knew that we had to tell our truth. Because you hear so many stories, people trying to say that the October 7th wasn't real, that it was some army things, a war. No, we want to show to the world, this is what happened. This is in your face. You will think whatever you want to think about it, but this is what happened. And we want to put it in your face now. And then you decide if October 7th happened or not. Or if it was the Hamas militant against his army. or it was terrorists against civilians. So it was a responsibility that we really felt that it's on our shoulders.

23:27And this is what we did. Fauda has a global audience. And I want to talk to you about how you imagine this season being received when you're working on it around the world and specifically the Arab world. And I just want to quote here. So I mentioned it in the intro, it's popular around the world, extremely popular around the world, especially across a range of Arab countries. In the middle of September, it was the number one show in Lebanon. It was top five in Jordan and Qatar. It was number five in the UAE. It was top 10 in Kuwait. I can go on and on and on. And there's a writer for The Atlantic magazine who wrote a piece about season five.

24:02His name is John Aziz. Interestingly enough, he has roots in the West Bank. He's got Palestinian family. And he writes, for any Israeli drama, much less one about undercover operatives apprehending and often killing Palestinian and Lebanese militants, to become a hit across the Arab world is remarkable. For it to happen in a season partially devoted to the events of October 7th, 2023, and their aftermath is nothing short of astonishing. Did you imagine it would be received with these off-the-charts viewership numbers in the Arab world when you were working on it? Avi, I'll start with you. Short answer, no.

24:45I didn't see it coming. I thought that we'll have, and I shared my concerns with Lior many times. I thought that not too many people are going to watch it in the Middle East and all over the world. Why? Because, you know, we're very much not popular, meaning us Israelis. And again, it's such a brutal wound, open, still open. So I thought that, you know, people wouldn't like to see a show like that. Lior, before you respond, I just want to quote one more time from this piece by John Aziz, which we'll link to in the show notes, which is a really interesting piece. He writes, this season will no doubt challenge some of the Arab viewership that the show has built up.

25:22Depicting these events in great detail is a challenge to those who falsely claim that the war in Gaza was unprovoked, as well as to those who do not believe that Hamas committed war crimes or that October 7th was an Israeli false flag. So what do you think, I mean, these audiences in the Arab world, Lior, are seeing when they see this season? Like they're clearly being driven to watch this in big numbers. What do you think that they are wrestling with or they're encountering? I've asked a Lebanese friend of mine, and I asked him, why the hell people in Lebanon are watching Fauda? What's the magic?

25:59And he told me two things. First of all, the majority of the Lebanese want peace with Israel. The minority is very loud. The minority is very violent. But the majority of the Lebanese really want to have peace with Israel, like the Israelis want to have peace with Lebanese. I think we are much more connected than ever. This is one thing. The other thing he told me that we are sharing the same enemy. Most of the Lebanese doesn't like Hezbollah. They doesn't like Iran. And they doesn't like the intervention that they have in their country. So they are related. And listen, I'm getting hundreds or thousands of messages from people in the Arab world through my social media.

26:41And you know what's crazy? I'm getting messages from people in Lebanon that's saying, why you didn't show how cruel they were in October 7th? Why didn't you show how brutal they were, the terrorists? Wow. In real life, they were much more brutal. So the Lebanese sent me some messages. They said, why you didn't show that? They were saying you held back? Yeah, that we were too, how do you say, gentle. Yeah, yeah, sanitized, too sanitized. Yeah, so for us, and I think it's bigger than that, Dan, I think the majority of the people in the world want to have peace, they want to live in quiet, they don't want to have wars like us.

27:20We don't want to have wars, but there is a loud minority on social media and loud minority all over the world who's taking control of the conversation instead of the majority of the people of the world, that they are very silenced now and they're not saying anything. I want to add one more reason why it's so popular. And this is something very simple and I might sound not modest enough, but it's a good show. It's a good TV show. And I think that at the end of the day, because the drama was built in a very specific way, especially about those two episodes, makes it even more interesting to watch.

27:56Even if you live in Qatar or Lebanon or Jordan wherever. We'll be back with Lior and Avi right after this message.

28:07Hi, it's Dan Sinor. Israel is heading into one of its most consequential elections, and this time the whole world is watching closely. Hot takes and daily noise are pretty much guaranteed to populate your media diet. But as with any election, there's a deeper story about identity, religion, democracy, and what kind of country Israelis want to live in. That's why ARK Media launched Israel Votes, a special initiative across Call Me Back, For Heaven's Sake, and ARK News Daily. You'll hear from the leading candidates shaping the race, along with analysis and reporting from two of Israel's leading political analysts, ARK Media contributors Nadav Ael and Amit Sego.

28:50Join us for Israel Votes, your front row seat to the election that could define Israel's future. Go to arcmedia.org forward slash votes to watch and listen. See you there.

29:07And we're back with Lior Raz and Avi Sekharov. One aspect or one consistent approach of one of Fauter's signatures throughout the first four seasons has always been showing the humanity on both sides of the conflict. So even the antagonists in previous seasons who we learn to hate, there are certain moments where you kind of pull this trick on your audience, on your viewers, where you're forced to understand the human dilemmas, the personal relationships, the contradictions, if you will, in some of the most barbaric characters in the previous seasons on the Palestinian side. You don't do that so much in this season.

29:45Did October 7th make that instinct harder to maintain? I guess it didn't. I guess that for us, it was challenging in another way, in a different way. Because again, this is one of the most significant things about Fada, you know, showing the conflict from both sides. At the end of the day, after October 7th, we understood that you cannot go deep into the heart of a nuchba murderer, terrorist, that was part of this terrible massacre that took place on October 7th. And, you know, understanding his reasons and motivation, it's not about that. But what we did is a kind of another trick, meaning during the plot of all the other nine episodes, while we do follow the other side, which are Europeans, European, white Europeans that are being kind of tricked or dragged by Hamas's people, by Hamas's propaganda and are joining Hamas in their terrorist activities.

30:42And we were showing them and we did deep dive into their hearts and their conflicts through, of course, the character of Anne and Mélodie Lorraine, the French, very famous actress from Inglourious Bastards. And over there, we did show what they're facing and the dilemmas and all the questions that they're dealing with. I want to ask you about that because I'm glad you brought it up because this is a big theme of this season, which didn't exist in previous seasons, or at least not to the same extent, certainly, which this chorus of sympathizers for Hamas and sympathizers for October 7th in some way, meaning for the massacre, that it was some kind of pursuit of Palestinian liberation, justified Palestinian response to Israel's aggression.

31:33quote-unquote occupation, whatever, that there's this whole echo chamber throughout the West, largely in Europe, but not only Europe. We see these people on American college campuses. We see them protesting throughout capitals, throughout Europe. And this is a big theme. And this Melanie Laurent, who plays Anne, as you said, and the people around her in France and Marseille are an important part of the story in season five. What I was most struck by, Avi, and I'm reminded of this as you bring it up was I didn't see it coming to the extent that it became a big theme of our story after October 7th.

32:07Years later, we're sitting there scratching our heads, looking around being like, what is going on? Like, how are these huge swaths of Western society that have no connection or not from the Arab Muslim world? How are they so invested in the Hamas cause? And you guys wrote that in as a big part of the story. And as Leora said earlier, you started writing this soon after October 7th. Did you guys anticipate that this would be a big theme of our world, of our real world, not our fictionalized world, of our real world after October 7th? Like, how did that become part of the story for you guys? I will remind you that two days after October 7th, the demonstrations against Israel started.

32:45Yeah. Two days after October 7th, the demonstrations against Israel in the universities and the U.S. started. It's pure antisemitism, pure antisemitism. It's, I cannot explain it in a different way because I heard someone who says that we are in a war for the last 20 years, but we didn't participate in this war. We didn't know that we are in a war, that in the last 20 years, there are some movements, countries, governments, who's paying to universities, buying properties, buying governments, buying people, buying politicians with their money. And they are trying to control the narrative and they are controlling the narrative now in this war that we didn't know that happening in the last 20 years.

33:29And now we see the outcome of those 20 years of funding all those places that are now controlling the narrative that the Hamas, the terrorists are the heroes. And for us, it's, I remember all of us, all the Israelis, two days after October 7, we were griefing. We were counting the bodies. People start to demonstrate against Israel saying that we are genociding. So for me, it's pure anti-Semitism. I don't have any words. And it still continues, Dan, and you see that not only the colleges and campuses, you see it all over the place. You see it in Hollywood. I'm sorry to say that, I mean, but there are some, even Jewish actors that are joining the so-called party.

34:11Why? Maybe it's cool to be anti-Israel. Maybe it's cool to be pro-Hamas and to call it pro-Palestine, but it's not pro-Palestine. And it's pretty obvious that you support Hamas. So what's behind this? I cannot really understand. Maybe this is a kind of an attempt to be popular, to get more, you know, people following you on the social networks. I don't know. Actually, I don't care anymore. I mean, we don't care anymore because we had enough of those sometimes young, sometimes less young people that are not really educated, do not really understand the picture. At the end of the day, that was our truth.

34:45And yes, we understood that in Europe, there are some organizations that are trying to provoke young people to join them and to support their activities against Israel. So this is why we showed, you know, those Europeans that have been recruited to Hamas. And we even had a special cameo guest on episode five, if I'm not wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I don't know how many people here know that. He's talking about me. that Dan Sinor, the host of Call Me Back, did call us back and was a cameo as a Hamas supporter on episode five of season five. I hear that episode five is the highest downloaded episode of the season.

35:29So I'm not saying there's a connection. Because Dan, you look like, you really look like a European student in a way. I know, I know, because I'm clean shaven. You guys didn't give me enough notice to gross double for that filming. Let me ask you about the cast. So when did you guys start shooting this season? Nine months ago? Ten months ago? Okay. So you're in the middle of still this, you know, where the issue of the war and Israel's response to the war is politically charged all over the place. And you bring in a lot of actors who are not from Israel. You mentioned Melanie Laurent, who's certainly not from Israel.

36:05This may have even been her first trip to Israel. I don't know. You guys can tell me. So you're bringing in all these people. Obviously, you have a lot of Arab actors in this season. So you're filming this while Israel is in the middle. Again, I keep coming back to this question about doing all this while events are unfolding in real time, while tensions are so charged, so high. I think Israelis feel like the whole world is against them. And here you are literally bringing non-Israelis into Israel for a long stretch of time to participate in this film while the war is going on. You're filming while the war is going on.

36:40What was the dynamic like with this cast, particularly with the non-Jews in the cast? So I'll talk about Melanie. Melanie, we played together in two different movies before in Six Underground and Operation Finale. And we became very good friends. And after I told her that we have a role for French character, she shouted at me why she's not doing it. Shouted you meaning like, why aren't you thinking about me for this role? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she was, how crazy you are that you're not offering me this job, this character. I want to be part of Fauda. And I talked to Avi and immediately we said yes and we got her.

37:16But while we were shooting, the war with Iran started. So Israel was bombed with heavy missiles while they were here, those actors. Hakim, he came from France, Algerian guy with a Muslim religion. and Melanie who came to Israel, she was in Israel for like once, I think, for one day or for 24 hours recording something. And she came here and immediately she fell in love in Israel. She really felt in love in Israel. While the war started, she called me and she said, I don't have shelter in my home and I have a shelter in my home. I mean, she didn't have a shelter in the home she was staying in when she was in Israel.

37:55Yeah, yeah, yeah, while we were filming. And I said, come over, let's be our guest, live with us. And she lived with us. the whole time with my family, with my kids, with my wife, with my dog, with my cat. We were all together like a big, happy family. And after the war ended, she didn't want to leave the house. She wanted to stay with us and she stayed. And after we finished shooting, she came back to Israel again and again. She wanted to be part. She felt in love in Israel. Also Hakim. Hakim was, I remember every Friday night, he was sending me pictures, all of us, sending pictures to all of us that he's doing a kiddush with different families in Israel, happy.

38:34He wanted to buy a house here. It was really, when you feel it, when you know Israelis and when you know what's happening here and when you feel the atmosphere, the real atmosphere, not the thing that you're telling, that people see from outside or think about us from the outside, you understand it. Israel, it's an amazing place to live. And both of them and all of them actually felt the same way. we're constantly hearing stories about how israel israeli creative artists israeli storytellers are being you know israeli academics israeli scientists are being isolated they're being canceled they're being boycotted obviously again we see a lot of this in the hollywood scene as you alluded to before avi were you worried when you were making this that there's no way this season, particularly the way you portray episodes seven and eight, will survive efforts to cancel it once it goes on the global stage?

39:32You know, pretty soon we got the call from Netflix that they were saying, we're going to air it. We're going to show it. Meaning pretty soon after you had created it for the Israeli audience for Yes. So after we finished the writing and then we were about to start shooting, it was pretty clear to us that Netflix is behind us and are supporting FAUDA fifth season. So I think that there was no real question mark about is the international audience going to watch it or not. For us, it was known, it was clear, yes, Netflix is going to air it and it's great. And since then, it's all over the world.

40:15192 countries, if I'm not wrong, reached the top 10 in the US, including all the other streamers, according to one of the websites, according to Variety, actually. So having everything that you said, followed our fifth season, enjoying lots of audience, many people watching it, it's a kind of a miracle. Because this is the thing that we didn't see. We knew that it's going to be aired, but we didn't know how popular is it going to be. I mean, all the time that you know that it's about to be aired on Netflix, You don't know how many people are going to watch it with everything that happened in Gaza and all the criticism against Israel, against the Israeli government.

40:57And at the end of the day, this is a huge surprise for us. And it's a great surprise. But you call it a miracle. It was also a big risk. Like, did you guys ever have a conversation saying we're producing something here that could provoke huge backlash and completely undermine the story we're trying to tell? and maybe we should rein it in or maybe we should tone it down. I will stop you. I will stop you for a second. All right. Listen, we're not scared, Javi and I. We're not scared. We don't play these games of canceling, not canceling. It's ridiculous. You know, we're doing our things. We are artists.

41:34We're doing our shows. We're doing our art. We bring it to the world. We're bringing stories. We want people to feel. We want people to get emotions from what we're writing and what we're doing. That's it. And the boycotting thing that you're talking about, it's ridiculous because how art, people, artistic society want to boycott other artists because of their religion or the place that they are coming. So you are not an artist if you boycott different artists because of their religion. This is art. Art, it's about to be open, to be democratic, to understand many other. This is why we see other different shows, different movies from all over the world.

42:16I'm not judging anyone by his opinions, by his religion. I'm judging them by the good story, good actors or not. And that's it. By the way, I think that we expected even more of the calls for boycotting Fauda. I mean, we had it on the second season from the BDS movement that called to boycott Fauda and not to air it and not to watch it. And of course, it helped us in the Arab world. I think this is one of the reasons it became so popular. We expected some voices saying bad stuff about Fawda, calling to stop airing, calling to stop watch it. And in a way, it was kind of surprising that we didn't hear many voices like that.

42:55So we have a kind of a small WhatsApp group for Fawda. And then at some point I noticed that El-Akbar, it's a kind of website that is affiliated with Hezbollah, called on its website to boycott Fawda because it serves the Zionist entity and the Zionist enemy. And I sent it to everyone on the team and I said, thank God we have someone calling to boycott us. Leo and I truly believe that in good content, you'll have good results, meaning that if you bring on even a topic that is controversial or under discussion or not politically correct to follow, if it's good, then people would follow, then people would watch it.

43:43And I think that this is what stands in our belief and even in our business model. This is what we do. We bring stories that for some clients, let's call them that way, are not that convenient with those kinds of materials. But at the end of the day, we think that they're great stories and we believe in good stories. There will be eventually dozens, perhaps hundreds of films and television shows about October 7th. In the years to come, decades to come. Lior, what do you worry future dramatizations might actually get wrong about how the story of October 7th is told? Listen, there are so many angles to this story.

44:24So many people, so many heroes, so many victims, so many great stories, so many bad stories. There's so many, probably we're going to hear or we will see different perspective of the same day from so many angles. I don't worry about anything. I just want people to see those stories because in every one of us, every one of us know someone who had this crazy story that day. And for us to see it, if it's a good one, we watch it. And as Avi said, if it's a good story, it's a good movie, everybody in the world will watch it as well. I believe in art. I believe in good faith. I believe in artists. And I believe that if someone wants to tell a story and is doing it in a good way, in a professional way, in an emotional way, we all want to watch it.

45:19And if it's a bad one, nobody will watch it. I want to say here's something. At the beginning of this conversation, I mentioned, you know, that almost everything that you see on episodes 7 and 8 is based on true events, okay? So even when you show a team of soldiers, of special forces from the Shin Bet and from the Amman fighting over there on the fence, it's based on a real event that happened there. But at 629, there were around 30 special forces, people that were sent by the Shin Bet and the Amman in order to look what is happening on the ground. It wasn't that they were sent in order to block Hamas invasion with, you know, thousands of terrorists.

45:54No, they were just trying to understand what the hell was going on over there in the South. But the bottom line is, guys, look, I think that there's a consensus in Israel about the results, about the catastrophic results of this day with 1 ,200 people that were murdered and 251 people that were taken as hostages. Just think for one second, what would have happened if it took place in the U.S.? What would happen to the U.S. if 42 ,000 people would have been murdered in one single day? And 8 ,000 would have been taken as hostages to an enemy state. So in Pearl Harbor, 2 ,403 people were killed during the Japanese attack over Pearl Harbor.

46:42And the U.S. started a world war because of that and bombed Japan with two nuclear weapons. Two nuclear bombs. So at the end of the day, when you remember that, maybe then you will start to understand Israel's mentality and what happened to Israel following October 7th. Okay. Gentlemen, before we wrap, is there anything else you would hope that our audience would have in mind as they watch season five of Fauda? Lior, I'll start with you. Yeah, just for them to start ask questions and not be determined in their point of view. I'm talking about the people who hates us with no reason. So please just ask questions.

47:22Ask what happened there. Why did they do that? Why they act in the way they acted? And why Israel retaliated after October 7th? Just ask those questions. For us, this is the best thing if it will happen, that people will ask questions. Rather than coming to sweeping conclusions. Yeah. Avi? You can say that I was, it was right, and that's it. You don't have anything to say of it. It's okay. Well, I guess that Leo was wrong. No, I'm kidding. My hope is that other than following the show and understanding better what Israel went through, people would like the show because of the TV quality, because of the drama that we created.

48:04And at the end of the day, it's a drama, it's fiction. And I'm sorry to say that, but in reality, it was way, way worse. Wow. Okay. Lior, Avi, thank you for doing this. And we hope our listeners and viewers who haven't watched season five yet of Fata will watch it. And for those who have watched it, just watch episode five again. You don't have to watch the whole season again. I've got a complaint to make to the creators, which I won't do now, which I had one or two lines that were cut out. I don't know why that happened. I practiced, I studied and rehearsed. Your Arabic accent was amazing. Yeah.

48:43Leo, did we kill his character at the end of 50? No, no, no, no. My character wasn't killed. Oh, okay. No, no, no. I've hoped for season six. We killed him. No, no, no, no. Let's see how this podcast will end and then we'll decide if he did or not. We'll make a decision. This is how decisions in the writer's room are made. It's all based on personal vendetta. All right, gentlemen. Thank you. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Take care. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

49:27I'm Debra Pardes, the host of ARK News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters. But it can be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all. That's why we started ARK News Daily. Every weekday morning, I walk you through the most important news, give you the context you need, and let you know what to look out for next. I don't try to convince you of anything, and I don't waste your time. On most days, I'll be in your ears for about 10 minutes or less. Then you can move on with your day, hopefully a little bit smarter than before. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes.

50:06I hope to see you tomorrow.

50:11you