FULL-ON FAUDA | a review
My first thought when I heard enthusiastic accounts of the 7 October attack on the oppressor was: There will be Hell to pay. My next thought was: I wonder what the creators of the FAUDA series will make of this?
Now we know.
According to FAUDA, the state-run "revenge" is not enough: private vengeance from elite soldiers must be added to it. They call it blood feud to our faces.
That is what the makers of FAUDA learned from the counter-attack from the oppressed: Not even the institutional genocide suffices.
One might say oh, but the series simply portrays its characters. Not true.
FAUDA has always made its suffering gang of warrior protagonists sympathetic and the only real vantage point through which to perceive the "conflict" that is now romanticed as an eternal, inevitable one between brothers.
Oh. So. Cute.
According to the series, the only good Arab has always been a collaborator or a woman you can bang. The series' main man has a way with women, even in the enemy camp of less worthy Arabs and gullible, stunningly blond Europeans who marry terrorists and even enrol in suicide attacks rather than continue their professional lives as journalists.
Doron is a ladies man due to his compassionate, chivalrous ways before he goes in for the kill, whilst simultaneously being a lad's lad and very beloved by all, however much he drives them out of their mind with his incessant being out and about saving those in need of his selfless heroism.
The actor is of course also the man who wrote the series with himself in that flattering light: such a guilt-driven Jewish James Bond, albeit looking like a barrel with a pumpkin on top.
And even the collaborators are treacherous rats, whilst The Only True Female is the rightous Jewish woman who partakes in the "defense" of the State whilst looking fab; or the less spectacular ones who wait loyally and desperately at home for the love of their own inconsequential lives as housewives and child-rearers:
the Israeli elite soldiers, this time gone AWOL and declaring to each other and to the screen their loss of faith in the very system that trained them and which they served their entire lives.
Oh, and the French secret service agent trying to stop the private Israeli vengeance in France is of course a corrupt bufoon with a permanent bad hair day, sloppy hygiene, overweight in a universe of lookers and on the payroll of Ħamas terrorists, whilst the fact that his smart-looking and apologetic superiors collaborate with Israeli secret service is presented as entirely normal.
We get to see terrifying scenes from the slaughter of the meskīn youth who simply wanted to party and chill on stolen land and, surprise—surprise, were treated as invadors by the locals. This is of course terror, whilst a genocide is a war and somehow the fault of the killed-off population; and ethnic cleansing and apartheid are just blood libel invented by Israel's enemies.
Yet the central pain point in this season is the grueful attack on a kibbutz built inside Gaza. WTF? Who expects to live a calm suburban-like life as invaders? Who choose to raise their children inside such a project?
War is terrible, and war is terror. Why bring your children along to the war? And how can teens be utterly helpless babies, if they are expected to become soldiers in the war machine any minute now?
I take no joy in the killings and the likely rapes. I just wonder at the madness of the set-up. Just how self-delusional can a whole people be? And by people I mean citizens of a State built on stolen land and a twisted conviction of entitlement "because Holocaust", eternal self-pity and flabbergasting lies.
Symbolic of the series' inaccuracy of anything beyond its own home turf is its depiction of European airports: When did Brussels' Zaventem and Marseille Provence Airport ever look like tiny provincial train stations?
And who in their right mind can imagine Palestinians clamoring in the streets that Marseille is theirs? It is not. It is a very Algerian city in France, but then again, an Arab is an Arab, innit? Even when that Arab is actually not Arab but Berber and just going about their own business.
FAUDA pretends to be antisystem now. It always pretended to be critical of the State and understanding of the Other. It never really was.
This series is part and parcel of the ħasbara narrative.
