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

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 twenty-four hours. 17 00:02:50.360 --> 00:03:05.620 Between nineteen sixty-eight and nineteen seventy-six, Palestinian terror groups carried out or attempted sixteen hijackings and a similar number of other aviation attacks, including strikes on El Al targets in Athens, Brussels, Istanbul, and Rome. 18 00:03:06.180 --> 00:03:15.080 Their goals were always to isolate Israel, reach a global audience, and terrify Israelis. And as Amit Segal writes, they succeeded. 19 00:03:15.480 --> 00:03:28.040 Entebbe in nineteen seventy-six actually ended that era by showing the West an alternative to capitulation. And once a rescue became credible, hijacking was a far worse bet. 20 00:03:28.640 --> 00:03:31.180 So what are the lessons we've learned so far from today? 21 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:44.020 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. 22 00:03:44.320 --> 00:04:00.980 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. 23 00:04:01.460 --> 00:04:12.640 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. 24 00:04:13.340 --> 00:04:21.600 Each 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. 25 00:04:22.220 --> 00:04:32.500 Now on to the episode we recorded with Lior and Avi a few days ago. It's not like season one, two, three, four. It's something else. 26 00:04:32.780 --> 00:04:39.800 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. 27 00:04:39.820 --> 00:04:47.380 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. 28 00:04:48.060 --> 00:05:02.680 We knew that we had to tell our truth because you hear so many stories, people trying to say that 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. 29 00:05:02.680 --> 00:05:18.580 [upbeat music] It's nine AM on Sunday, September twenty-seventh here in New York City. 30 00:05:18.640 --> 00:05:32.020 It's four PM on Sunday, September twenty-seventh 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. 31 00:05:32.740 --> 00:05:46.980 It has taken an intensely local conflict and turned it into a Hebrew-speaking global phenomenon. The new season, season five, released globally earlier this month, reached Netflix's top ten in dozens of countries. 32 00:05:47.500 --> 00:05:58.340 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. 33 00:05:59.060 --> 00:06:09.260 Two episodes take Fauda directly into October seventh, placing its fictional characters inside events that actually happened just shy of three years ago. 34 00:06:09.880 --> 00:06:15.120 And in doing so, they are entering a much larger process that is only just beginning. 35 00:06:15.740 --> 00:06:28.020 Films, television series, novels, plays, eventually October seventh will exist not only as something people experienced, but as something millions of people who were never there will encounter only through stories. 36 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:36.380 And that raises a difficult question. How do you turn history into fiction when it barely feels like history yet? 37 00:06:36.640 --> 00:06:56.000 When survivors are still living with what happened, when 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. 38 00:06:56.680 --> 00:07:05.140 We often think that history produces stories, but stories also produce history. Think about Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, The Hurt Locker. 39 00:07:05.780 --> 00:07:15.480 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? 40 00:07:16.020 --> 00:07:27.300 How much license can fiction take with something this traumatic? And what responsibility comes with knowing that your version of the story may travel much farther than the historical record itself? 41 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:37.040 This is what we're gonna talk about today with the creators of Fauda, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff. My conversation with them right after this short message. 42 00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:50.760 [gentle music] 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 cliché. 43 00:07:51.340 --> 00:08:03.220 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. 44 00:08:03.660 --> 00:08:16.380 If 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. 45 00:08:16.900 --> 00:08:25.840 IDI offers practical proposals

for strengthening Israeli democracy and clear, accessible analysis of the biggest challenges facing the Jewish state. 46 00:08:26.220 --> 00:08:41.700 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. 47 00:08:42.420 --> 00:08:54.720 As 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. 48 00:08:55.240 --> 00:09:13.180 To learn more, visit elections.idi.org.il/2026 or follow the link in the show notes. [gentle music] Lior, Avi, welcome to Call Me Back. Thank you, Dan. 49 00:09:13.520 --> 00:09:27.240 Hi, Dan. Great to be with you guys, both of you joining me from Tel Aviv. Lior, I'm gonna start our conversation with the two episodes that dramatize the morning of October 7th. They were devastating to watch. 50 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:39.360 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? 51 00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:49.140 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. 52 00:09:49.580 --> 00:10:04.480 In Israel, we all-- we didn't know what, what happened to us and how it could happen to us, this crazy situations. And when Avi and I started to write the fifth season of Fauda, we couldn't ignore October 7. 53 00:10:04.880 --> 00:10:13.740 We thought that in the beginning when, 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. 54 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:28.720 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 gonna be out. 55 00:10:28.780 --> 00:10:36.220 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? 56 00:10:36.620 --> 00:10:48.420 We 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. 57 00:10:48.840 --> 00:10:56.600 And we knew that we have a responsibility to the world and to show the story that we all had, we all, uh, got affected by. 58 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:05.720 It wasn't easy, because how you tell a story s- of such a big event, such a huge event for the Israelis, for the Jewish nation, how do you tell this story? 59 00:11:06.300 --> 00:11:18.380 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. 60 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:30.700 So 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 Eli that they know for 10 years already. 61 00:11:31.240 --> 00:11:43.180 All the viewers, the people who watch Fauda, they all know those characters very, very well. So if you put those character in October 7, they will understand much better what happened to all of us in Israel in this day. 62 00:11:43.980 --> 00:11:48.700 And Lior, just to kind of set the context, I just want to spend a very quick moment on this. 63 00:11:49.220 --> 00:11:57.560 You learned about October 7th 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. 64 00:11:58.060 --> 00:12:05.320 Yeah, she went just for the weekend to this kibbutz, Erez, Kibbutz Erez. I was in Romania when October 7 happened. Right. 65 00:12:05.660 --> 00:12:14.960 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 a shelter, and I didn't understand what she's talking about. 66 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:26.580 It was crazy for me to wake up with this call. And she said immediately, "Just watch what happening in the news." And, and I opened TV, and what we saw was devastating. So October 7 was a shock for me. 67 00:12:26.620 --> 00:12:32.120 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 sons. 68 00:12:32.340 --> 00:12:39.152 But for me, it was the hardest thing to understand that I cannot do anything until I went back day after. Okay. 69 00:12:39.772 --> 00:12:51.152 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 war's ended. 70 00:12:51.612 --> 00:13:01.132 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? 71 00:13:01.192 --> 00:13:09.372 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. 72 00:13:10.132 --> 00:13:13.932 So this is part of the conversation that we were having, part of the dilemma. 73 00:13:13.932 --> 00:13:24.952 'Cause 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 something like that? 74 00:13:25.052 --> 00:13:32.732 How can you deal with knowing that, you know, 1,200 families lost their son or

daughter or relative or whatever. 75 00:13:33.152 --> 00:13:47.572 The 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? 76 00:13:47.732 --> 00:13:58.812 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, the, the scar. It's an open wound. 77 00:13:59.512 --> 00:14:09.732 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. 78 00:14:09.772 --> 00:14:17.852 And for us, you know, it's a nation in a trauma. It's a nation not even in a post-trauma. It's still there. We're breathing it. We're living it. 79 00:14:18.092 --> 00:14:31.692 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. 80 00:14:31.732 --> 00:14:38.752 It's gonna show the trauma not only to people all around the world, but to people that were really living and breathing the trauma. 81 00:14:39.912 --> 00:14:44.472 Lior, what was the hardest decision you guys had to make about what to show and what not to show? 82 00:14:45.152 --> 00:14:54.232 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, or that's too close to the bone. We can't do that." It wasn't just in the writer's room. 83 00:14:54.272 --> 00:15:08.192 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 womens in the party, outside of the party, in the kibbutzim. 84 00:15:08.892 --> 00:15:21.132 How much do you allow yourself to show? So we decided to do it in very delicate way, if you can say that about what you've seen there, but you see blood under skirts. 85 00:15:21.592 --> 00:15:34.092 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, you know what he does in the room. 86 00:15:34.392 --> 00:15:42.632 Exactly. You know exactly what's gonna happen there. But on the other way, there was two scenes that were very hard scenes that every Israeli knows about. 87 00:15:43.172 --> 00:15:50.352 One was the container, that people in the party were hiding in a container. Yeah, like a big dumpster, like a big garbage container. Yeah. 88 00:15:50.392 --> 00:15:59.192 And, 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. 89 00:15:59.632 --> 00:16:12.612 So it was like 20, 30 dead kids over

there, and it really happened. It really happened, meaning you, you guys were recreating something that actually occurred. Yeah. And also, there was the migunit scene. 90 00:16:12.992 --> 00:16:22.572 How do you say migunit? It was a shelter, like a, 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. 91 00:16:23.132 --> 00:16:31.392 By the way, when I saw that scene, I was thinking of where Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage from, where Anna Shapiro was killed. I've been to that actual shelter. 92 00:16:31.952 --> 00:16:38.372 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? 93 00:16:38.672 --> 00:16:54.492 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. 94 00:16:55.151 --> 00:17:10.072 And 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. 95 00:17:10.672 --> 00:17:23.332 I wasn't acting. I was really inside of the 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. 96 00:17:23.712 --> 00:17:36.312 For us, it was so real because it was like a year ago, two years ago, and we were, we were living it. So as an actors, and this is why it's so hard and so bleeding, these two episodes. You feel that you are inside of it. 97 00:17:36.952 --> 00:17:49.928 Avi, go ahead 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, uh, Lior mentioned. 98 00:17:50.348 --> 00:17:51.368 There's a dilemma here. 99 00:17:51.608 --> 00:18:03.008 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 course, and then comes the, the discussion, "What should we show? What shouldn't we? 100 00:18:03.128 --> 00:18:13.688 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 happened in reality, though. 101 00:18:13.968 --> 00:18:27.088 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 Nukhba people were carrying with them. Why? 102 00:18:27.148 --> 00:18:41.748 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 AK47 and a hand grenade or RPG, but also a machete, a sword. 103 00:18:42.427 --> 00:18:54.108 And that brings the question of why on earth would a terrorist with an AK47 invade a kibbutz or a town with a huge sword on his back? And that's real, and I have to emphasize this. 104 00:18:54.348 --> 00:19:05.128 Almost each and every scene that you see in those two episodes, seven and eight, are taken, are inspired by true events, starting from the starting point in which Eli gets the phone call around 3:00 a.m. 105 00:19:05.448 --> 00:19:11.828 and, you know, the Shin Bet tells him, "Get ready. We need you to come as a kind of, uh, what they're, they're calling tequila force." 106 00:19:12.248 --> 00:19:22.328 Tequila force was the unit that Israel deployed to the border, obviously before they knew the scale of the invasion. It's an intervention team for the Shin Bet. Yeah. 107 00:19:22.588 --> 00:19:40.108 It's a kind of a SWAT team of the Shin Bet with the YAMAM that were sent early in the morning, the police on the terror unit that are working with the Shin Bet together, and they were sent there because the Shin Bet and the army had some kind of an intelligence that something is happening on the border. 108 00:19:40.168 --> 00:19:48.807 They didn't know what is happening, so this is why they sent the first team, and this is why we s- we show Eli going there. Then of course, the Bedouin guy that was murdered there. 109 00:19:49.108 --> 00:19:53.508 Then you have the junction, the junction with the police and all of it, and the kibbutz. 110 00:19:53.568 --> 00:20:05.888 And 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. 111 00:20:06.908 --> 00:20:19.548 So every one of those details, I just wanna 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. 112 00:20:20.288 --> 00:20:27.488 The major events, yes. You definitely can connect them to real events that happened on the ground. Okay. And did you... 113 00:20:28.068 --> 00:20:33.368 And this is a question for both of you, did you feel a different level of responsibility writing this season? 114 00:20:33.428 --> 00:20:57.108 I mean, you, you've written four seasons before, and did you just feel, like, a heavier sense of res- the, the stakes with this episode was gonna be-- I mean, I was just 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. 115 00:20:57.888 --> 00:21:06.928 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. 116 00:21:07.168 --> 00:21:16.368 But when this season, when you got-- went to work on this season, you, you had to know the stakes were way higher. What kind of sense of responsibility did you feel when you were writing? 117 00:21:17.308 --> 00:21:28.628 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, scriptwriters, as creators, as, uh, as a journalist, as whatever. 118 00:21:29.008 --> 00:21:40.168 For me at least, and I think that Lior agrees with me about that, you understand that this is something way bigger than just another TV show. Okay? Uh, it's not like season one, two, three, four. It's something else. 119 00:21:40.448 --> 00:21:51.408 Now there's a real story, a real event that when you follow the real events, you gotta be very careful about what you do, and I felt like that you have a kind of a sacred mission in a way. 120 00:21:51.588 --> 00:21:57.128 Almost, you know, uh, the guy in the synagogue, the hazzan that reads the prayer. 121 00:21:57.708 --> 00:22:10.268 So w- It's called shaliach tzibbur, 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. Lior? 122 00:22:11.188 --> 00:22:23.568 It was bigger than us. The story tw- 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. 123 00:22:23.648 --> 00:22:34.828 We-- 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. 124 00:22:34.908 --> 00:22:43.148 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, uh, nine. Don't watch it." 125 00:22:43.608 --> 00:22:49.768 So for us, it was a huge responsibility we felt that we have and, and the atmosphere now in the world, much more. 126 00:22:50.428 --> 00:23:03.288 With this atmosphere, we knew that we had to tell our truth because you hear so many stories, people trying to say that October 7th wasn't real, that it was some army things, a war. No. 127 00:23:03.748 --> 00:23:07.348 We want to show to the world this is what happened. This is in your face. 128 00:23:08.148 --> 00:23:22.368 You will think whatever you wanna think about it, but this is what happened th- and we wanna put it in your face now, and then you decide if October 7 happened or not, or if it was the Hamas militant against Isr- uh, army, or it was terrorists against civilians. 129 00:23:23.148 --> 00:23:28.448 So it was a responsibility that we really felt that it's on our, our shoulders, and this is what we did. 130 00:23:29.288 --> 00:23:38.168 Fauda has a global audience, and I wanna 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. 131 00:23:38.268 --> 00:23:46.528 And I want-- I just wanna 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. 132 00:23:47.088 --> 00:23:57.688 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, I can go on and on and on. 133 00:23:57.728 --> 00:24:08.268 And there's a writer for The Atlantic magazine who wrote a piece about season five. His name's Jon Aziz. Interestingly enough, he has, uh, roots in the West Bank. He's got Palestinian family. 134 00:24:08.688 --> 00:24:22.088 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. 135 00:24:22.848 --> 00:24:31.968 For it to happen in a season partially devoted to the events of October 7th 2023 and their aftermath is nothing short of astonishing." 136 00:24:32.708 --> 00:24:47.008 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. I didn't see it coming. 137 00:24:47.528 --> 00:24:57.968 I thought that we'll have [laughs] -- 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? 138 00:24:58.048 --> 00:25:09.968 Because, you know, we're very much not popular, meaning us Israelis. And a- again, it touches such a brutal wound, open, still open. So I thought that, you know, people wouldn't like to, to see a show like that. 139 00:25:10.668 --> 00:25:17.228 Lior, before you respond, I just wanna-- I'll quote one more time from this piece by Jon Aziz, which we'll link in the show notes, which is a really interesting piece. 140 00:25:17.608 --> 00:25:22.828 He writes, "This season will no doubt challenge some of the Arab viewership that the show has built up. 141 00:25:22.928 --> 00:25:36.008 Depicting 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." 142 00:25:36.648 --> 00:25:46.508 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. 143 00:25:46.908 --> 00:26:00.408 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 watching Fauda? What's the magic?" And he told me two things. 144 00:26:00.708 --> 00:26:03.948 First of all, the majority of the Lebanese want peace with Israel. 145 00:26:04.508 --> 00:26:15.788 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. 146 00:26:16.568 --> 00:26:27.388 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. 147 00:26:28.008 --> 00:26:32.268 It doesn't like Iran, and it doesn't like the intervention that they have in their country. 148 00:26:32.928 --> 00:26:43.208 So they are related and-- listen, I'm getting hundred or thousands of messages from people in the Arab world through my social media. And you know what's crazy? 149 00:26:43.848 --> 00:26:56.188 I'm getting messages from people in Lebanon that's saying, "Why you didn't show how cruel they were in October 7? Why didn't you show how brutal they were, the terrorists?" Wow. In real life, they were much more brutal. 150 00:26:56.588 --> 00:27:09.208 So the Lebanese send me some messages. They said, "Why you didn't show that?" They were saying you held back? Yeah. That we were, we were too, how do you say, gentle. Yeah, yeah, sanitized. Too sanitized. Yeah. 151 00:27:09.708 --> 00:27:21.828 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, we don't want to have wars. 152 00:27:22.008 --> 00:27:35.388 But there is a mino-- 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. 153 00:27:36.028 --> 00:27:44.668 I wanna add one more reason why is it so popular, and this is something very simple, and I might sound not modest enough, but it's a good show. 154 00:27:45.088 --> 00:28:00.548 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, even if you live in Qatar or Lebanon or Jordan or wherever. 155 00:28:01.568 --> 00:28:17.048 We'll be back with Lior and Avi right after this message. [gentle music] Hi, it's Dan Senor. Israel is heading into one of its most consequential elections, and this time, the whole world is watching closely. 156 00:28:17.648 --> 00:28:30.508 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 wanna live in. 157 00:28:31.128 --> 00:28:39.788 That's why Arc Media launched Israel Votes, a special initiative across Call Me Back, For Heaven's Sake, and Arc News Daily. 158 00:28:40.168 --> 00:28:50.688 You'll hear from the

leading candidates shaping the race, along with analysis and reporting from two of Israel's leading political analysts, Arc Media contributors Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal. 159 00:28:51.388 --> 00:29:04.048 Join us for Israel Votes, your front row seat to the election that could define Israel's future. Go to arcmedia.org/votes to watch and listen. See you there. 160 00:29:07.968 --> 00:29:21.228 And we're back with Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff. One aspect or one consistent approach of one of Fauda's signatures throughout the first four seasons has always been showing the humanity on both sides of the conflict. 161 00:29:21.328 --> 00:29:42.688 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, 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. 162 00:29:43.552 --> 00:29:55.932 You don't do that so much in this season. Did October 7th make that instinct harder to maintain? I guess it did. I guess that for us it was challenging in, in other way, in a different way. 163 00:29:55.992 --> 00:30:02.092 Because again, this is one of the most significant things about Fauda, you know, showing the conflict mo- from both sides. 164 00:30:02.612 --> 00:30:14.472 At the end of the day after October 7th, we understood that you cannot go deep into the heart of a Nukhba murderer terrorist that was part of the, of this terrible massacre that took place on October 7th. 165 00:30:14.852 --> 00:30:18.812 And, you know, understanding his reasons and motivation, it's not about that. 166 00:30:18.912 --> 00:30:55.852 But what we did is a kind of another trick, meaning during the plot of, uh, 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' people, by Hamas' propaganda, and are joining Hamas in their terrorist activities, and we were showing them, and we did deep dive into their hearts and their conflicts through the, of course, the character of Anne and Melanie Laurent, the French very famous actress from Inglorious Bastards. 167 00:30:56.612 --> 00:31:03.592 And over there we did show what they're facing and the dilemmas and all the questions, uh, that they're dealing with. 168 00:31:04.552 --> 00:31:39.932 I wanna ask you about that because I, I'm glad you brought it up, because th- 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, quote unquote occupation, whatever, that there's this whole echo chamber throughout the West, largely in Europe, but not only Europe. 169 00:31:40.352 --> 00:31:47.612 We see these people on American college campuses. We see them protesting throughout capitals throughout Europe, and this is a big theme. 170 00:31:47.632 --> 00:31:55.392 And this Melanie Laurent, who plays Anne, as you said, and the people around her in France and Marseille are, are an important part of the story in season five. 171 00:31:55.672 --> 00:32:07.212 What I was most struck by, Avi, th- I am 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. 172 00:32:07.292 --> 00:32:11.352 Years later, we're sitting there scratching our heads, looking around, being like, "What is going on?" 173 00:32:11.992 --> 00:32:22.152 Like, how are these huge swaths of Western society that have no connection, are not from the Arab Muslim world, how are they so invested in the Hamas cause? 174 00:32:22.672 --> 00:32:29.192 And you guys wrote that in as a big part of the story, and as Lior said earlier, you started writing this soon after October 7th. 175 00:32:29.552 --> 00:32:40.152 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? 176 00:32:41.012 --> 00:32:52.152 I will remind you that two days after October 7th, the demonstrations against Israel started. Yeah. Two days after October 7th, the demonstrations against Israel in the universities and the US started. 177 00:32:52.612 --> 00:33:05.732 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 twenty years, but we didn't participate in this war. 178 00:33:05.772 --> 00:33:28.592 We didn't know that we are in a war, that in the last twenty years there are some movements, countries, governments who's paying to universities, buying properties, buying, uh, 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 twenty years. 179 00:33:29.372 --> 00:33:39.092 And now we see the outcome of those twenty years of funding all those places that con-- now controlling the narrative, that the Hamas, the terrorists are the heroes. 180 00:33:39.572 --> 00:33:47.252 And for us it's-- I remember all of us, all the Israelis, two days after October 7th, we were grieving. We were counting the bodies. 181 00:33:47.692 --> 00:33:57.072 People start to demonstrate against Israel, saying that we are [chuckles] we are genociding. So for me, it's, it's pure antisemitism. I don't have any, any words. 182 00:33:58.012 --> 00:34:04.292 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. 183 00:34:04.412 --> 00:34:11.692 I'm sorry to say that, I mean, but there are some, even Jewish actors that are joining the, the so-called party. Why? 184 00:34:11.792 --> 00:34:24.052 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. It's pretty obvious that you support Hamas. So what's behind this I cannot really understand. 185 00:34:24.112 --> 00:34:34.152 Maybe this is a, a kind of an attempt to be popular, to get more, you know, people following you on, uh, the social networks. I don't know. Actually, I don't care anymore. 186 00:34:34.252 --> 00:34:45.672 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. 187 00:34:45.732 --> 00:34:54.972 And 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. 188 00:34:55.452 --> 00:35:09.072 So this is why we showed, you know, uh, those Europeans that have been recruited to Hamas, and we even had a, a special cameo guest on episode five, if I'm not wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong. 189 00:35:09.992 --> 00:35:25.792 But I don't know how many people here know that- He's talking about me. [laughs] That Dan Senor, the host of Call Me Back, did call us back and was a cameo as a Hamas supporter on episode five of, uh, season five. 190 00:35:26.292 --> 00:35:36.372 I hear that episode five is the highest downloaded episode of the season, so I, um, I'm not saying there's a connection. 'Cause Dan, you look like-- You, you really look like a European student in a way. 191 00:35:36.392 --> 00:35:47.292 [laughs] I know, I know, 'cause I'm clean shaven. You guys didn't give me enough notice to grow stubble for that filming. Uh, let me ask you about the cast. So when did you guys start shooting this season? 192 00:35:48.276 --> 00:35:50.856 Nine months ago? Ten months ago? Okay. 193 00:35:51.336 --> 00:36:02.976 So you're in the middle of still this, you know, where, 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. 194 00:36:03.016 --> 00:36:09.716 You mentioned Melanie Laurent, who's certainly not from Israel. This may have even been her first trip to Israel. I don't know, you guys can tell me. So you've- you're bringing in all these people. 195 00:36:09.776 --> 00:36:16.696 Obviously, you have a lot of Arab actors in this season. So you're filming this while Israel is in the middle... 196 00:36:16.756 --> 00:36:25.276 Again, it comes-- 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. 197 00:36:25.736 --> 00:36:37.236 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. 198 00:36:37.516 --> 00:36:47.136 You're filming while the war is going on. What was the dynamic like with this cast, particularly with the non-Jews in the cast? So I'll talk about Melanie. 199 00:36:47.196 --> 00:36:55.336 Melanie, we played together in two different movies before, in 6 Underground and, and Operation Finale, and we became very good friends. 200 00:36:55.716 --> 00:37:06.376 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. 201 00:37:06.476 --> 00:37:16.476 She was, "How crazy you are that you're not offering me this job, this character, that I wanna be part of Fauda." And I, and I talked to Avi, and immediately we said yes, and, and we got her. 202 00:37:17.096 --> 00:37:31.236 But 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, uh, religion. 203 00:37:32.236 --> 00:37:43.456 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. 204 00:37:44.036 --> 00:37:52.396 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. 205 00:37:52.936 --> 00:37:59.676 You mean she didn't have a shelter in the home she was staying in while sh- when she was in Israel? Yeah, yeah, yeah, while we were filming. And I said, "Come over. Let's be our guest. Live with us." 206 00:38:00.156 --> 00:38:09.156 And she lived with us the whole time, with my family, with my kids, with my wife, with my dog, with my cat. [chuckles] We were all together like hap- [chuckles] big happy family. 207 00:38:09.756 --> 00:38:20.736 And after the war ended, she didn't want to leave- [chuckles]... 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... 208 00:38:20.876 --> 00:38:23.416 She felt in love in Israel. Also Hakim. 209 00:38:23.496 --> 00:38:34.256 Hakim was-- I remember every Friday night, he was sh- show-- 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. 210 00:38:34.256 --> 00:38:36.236 [chuckles] He wanted to, to buy a house here. 211 00:38:36.296 --> 00:38:52.216 It was really the-- When, when you feel it, when you know Israelis, and when you know what's happening here, and you, when you feel the atmosphere, the real atmosphere, not the thing that you're telling, that people see from outside or think about, about us out from the outside, you understand that Israel, it's an amazing place to live. 212 00:38:52.536 --> 00:38:55.476 And both of them, and all of them actually, felt the same way. 213 00:38:56.336 --> 00:39:12.856 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. 214 00:39:13.416 --> 00:39:17.196 Obviously, again, we see a lot of this in the Hollywood scene, as you alluded to before, Avi. 215 00:39:17.836 --> 00:39:31.796 Were you worried when you were making this that there's no way this season, particularly the way you portray episode seven and eight, will survive efforts to cancel it once it goes on the global stage? 216 00:39:33.036 --> 00:39:46.516 You 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. 217 00:39:47.076 --> 00:39:56.196 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. 218 00:39:57.076 --> 00:40:11.136 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, it's great. 219 00:40:11.496 --> 00:40:26.756 And, uh, since then, it's all over the world. It's 192 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. 220 00:40:27.196 --> 00:40:38.476 So having everything that you said, Fauda 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. 221 00:40:38.596 --> 00:40:50.756 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. 222 00:40:51.376 --> 00:41:04.296 With everything that happened in Gaza and all the criticism against Israel, against the Israeli government. And 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. 223 00:41:04.816 --> 00:41:05.916 It was also a big risk. 224 00:41:06.136 --> 00:41:20.916 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, or may-" I, I, I will stop you. 225 00:41:20.976 --> 00:41:34.656 I will stop you for a second. All right. Listen, we're not scared, Avi 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. 226 00:41:35.116 --> 00:41:46.016 We're doing our shows. We're doing our art. We, 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. 227 00:41:46.716 --> 00:41:59.076 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, the place that they are coming. 228 00:41:59.964 --> 00:42:05.124 So you are not an artist if you boycott different artists because of their, uh, uh, religion. This is art. 229 00:42:05.564 --> 00:42:19.764 Art is about to be open, to be democratic, to understand many other-- This is why we, we, we see other different shows, different movies from all over the world. I'm not judging anyone by his opinions, by his religion. 230 00:42:20.304 --> 00:42:31.304 I'm judging them by their 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. 231 00:42:31.824 --> 00:42:39.684 I mean, we had it on the second season from the BDS movement, that call to boycott Fauda and not to air it and not to watch it, and of course, it helped us in the Arab world. 232 00:42:40.124 --> 00:42:42.724 I think this is one of the reasons it became so popular. 233 00:42:43.224 --> 00:42:55.664 We expected some voices saying bad stuff about Fauda, 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. 234 00:42:56.184 --> 00:43:08.524 So we have a kind of a, a small, uh, WhatsApp group for Fauda, and then at some point I noticed that Al Akhbar, uh, it's a kind of a website that is affiliated with Hezbollah, 235 00:43:09.484 --> 00:43:22.584 called on its website to boycott, uh, Fauda because it serves the, 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." 236 00:43:23.644 --> 00:43:43.304 Lior 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. 237 00:43:43.804 --> 00:43:49.684 And I think that this is what stands in our belief and in even our in, in our business model. This is what we do. 238 00:43:50.304 --> 00:43:58.324 We bring stories that for some clients, let's call them that way, are not that convenient with those, uh, kinds of materials. 239 00:43:58.404 --> 00:44:02.804 But at the end of the day, we think that they're great stories, and we believe in good stories. 240 00:44:04.044 --> 00:44:12.524 There will be eventually dozens, perhaps hundreds of films and television shows about October 7th in the years to come, decades to come. 241 00:44:13.024 --> 00:44:24.324 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. 242 00:44:25.044 --> 00:44:41.844 So many people, so many heroes, so many victims, so many great stories, so many bad stories, so many-- Probably we're gonna hear or, or we will see different perspective of the, the same day for so many-- from so many angles. 243 00:44:42.424 --> 00:44:59.024 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. 244 00:44:59.204 --> 00:45:09.964 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. 245 00:45:10.524 --> 00:45:21.164 And I believe that if someone wants to, to tell a story and is doing it in a good way, in a professional way, in a emotional way, we all gonna watch it. And if it's a bad one, nobody will watch it. 246 00:45:22.224 --> 00:45:30.844 I want to say here something. At the beginning of this conversation, I mentioned, you know, that almost everything that you see on episodes seven and eight is based on true events, okay? 247 00:45:31.084 --> 00:45:40.944 So even when you show a team of soldiers, of special forces from the Shin Bet and from the YAMAM fighting over there on the fence, it's based on a real event that happened there. 248 00:45:41.284 --> 00:45:49.744 But at six twenty-nine, there were around thirty special forces people that were sent by the Shin Bet and the YAMAM in order to look what is happening on the ground. 249 00:45:49.804 --> 00:45:59.924 It wasn't that they were sent in order to block Hamas invasion with, you know, thousands of terrorists. No, they were just trying to understand what the hell was going on over there in the south. 250 00:46:00.224 --> 00:46:15.424 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 twelve hundred people that were murdered and two hundred and fifty-one people that were taken as hostages. 251 00:46:15.864 --> 00:46:20.784 Just think for one second, what would have happened if it took place in the US? 252 00:46:21.344 --> 00:46:33.504 What would happen to the US if forty-two thousand people would have been murdered in one single day and eight thousand would have been taken as, uh, hostages to, uh, an enemy state? 253 00:46:34.224 --> 00:46:49.344 So in Pearl Harbor, two thousand four hundred and three people were killed during the Japanese attack over Pearl Harbor, and the US started a world war because of that and bombed Japan with two nuclear weapon, two nuclear bombs. 254 00:46:49.964 --> 00:46:59.184 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. 255 00:46:59.744 --> 00:47:09.484 Gentlemen, before we wrap, is there anything else you w- would hope that our audience would have in mind as they watch season five of Fauda? Lior, I'll start with you. 256 00:47:10.384 --> 00:47:23.864 Yeah, just for them to start ask questions and not be determined in their point of view. I'm talking about the people who hate us with no reason. So please just ask questions. Ask what happened there. 257 00:47:24.624 --> 00:47:37.784 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. 258 00:47:38.404 --> 00:47:50.344 Rather than coming to sweeping conclusions. [chuckles] Yeah. Uh, Avi? You can say that I was-- it was right, and that's it. You don't have anything to say, Avi. It's okay. Well, I guess that Lior was wrong. 259 00:47:50.824 --> 00:47:52.124 Uh, no, I'm kidding. 260 00:47:52.124 --> 00:48:04.044 [laughs] My hope is that other than following the, the show and understanding better what Israel went through, people would like the show because of, uh, the TV quality, because of the drama that we created. 261 00:48:04.084 --> 00:48:14.684 And 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. 262 00:48:15.224 --> 00:48:27.384 Lior, Avi, thank you for doing this, and, um, we hope our listeners and viewers who haven't watched Season 5 yet of Fauda will watch it. And for those who have watched it, just watch Episode 5 again. 263 00:48:27.424 --> 00:48:36.504 You don't have to watch the whole season again. [laughs] Uh, 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. 264 00:48:36.584 --> 00:48:50.144 I practiced, I studied, I rehearsed. But, um- Your Arabic accent was amazing. [laughs] Yeah. Li- Lior, did we kill his character at the end of fifth s- f- No. No? No, no, no, my character wasn't killed. Oh, okay. 265 00:48:50.444 --> 00:48:59.484 No, no, no, I have hope for, uh, Season 6. We killed him. No, no, no, no. Let's see how this podcast will end, and then we'll decide if you're dead or not. [laughs] We'll make a decision. 266 00:48:59.824 --> 00:49:10.564 This is how decisions in the writers' room are, are, are made. It's all based on, on personal vendetta. Uh, all right, gentlemen, thank you. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Take care. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. 267 00:49:10.584 --> 00:49:31.104 [upbeat music] [gentle music] I'm Deborah Pardes, the host of Arc News Daily. 268 00:49:31.444 --> 00:49:40.924 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 Arc News Daily. 269 00:49:41.784 --> 00:49:52.924 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. 270 00:49:53.384 --> 00:50:01.204 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. 271 00:50:02.244 --> 00:50:13.724 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes. I hope to see you tomorrow. [upbeat music]