Fauda creators rule out plot line of Hamas cross-border attack as 'improbable'

Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, the creators of the internationally celebrated Israeli counter-terrorism TV series Fauda, revealed that they previously rejected a plot line involving a massive Hamas cross-border attack as “improbable.”

The original plot involved Hamas terrorists breaching the border fence and abducting Israel hostages after seizing control of one kibbutz. However, according to Issacharoff, the reason they considered the premise implausible was primarily due to Israel's renowned stringent border security measures along the Gaza perimeter.

“I remember saying, ‘Guys, what are the chances that dozens of terrorists would get to the border and the IDF wouldn’t have any indication of it? That they wouldn’t be shot down?’” Issacharoff recalled.

However, the unprecedented Oct. 7 invasion and massacre of 1,200 Israelis, with more than 250 hostages kidnapped into the coastal enclave, went far beyond the Fauda creators’ worst nightmares.

“What we had written became totally irrelevant,” Issacharoff said, after the Oct. 7 terror attack, when some 3,000 Gazan terrorists invaded Israeli communities located on the southern border with Gaza.

Launched in 2015, the Fauda television series follows an undercover Israeli counter-terrorism team battling jihadi terrorists in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and even Belgium. With much of the dialogue in Arabic – and depicting the conflict from both perspectives – Fauda has been praised for its realistic, complex and nuanced storylines.

Issacharoff recently confirmed that Fauda's upcoming fifth season would incorporate the ongoing war between Israel and the terror organization Hamas.

“Some people will be able to ignore it [the war] but we can’t; we will have to write the war in, in some way,” Issacharoff said.

The Fauda series does not merely offer realistic insights into the difficult world of counter-terrorism in the Middle East. The series is also painfully connected to the ongoing conflict in Gaza in real life.

In January, Fauda actor Idan Amedi, who is also a popular singer, was seriously injured while serving as a combat soldier during intense battles with Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Amedi arrived back in Israel with life-threatening injuries but has been recovering at the Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv.

In November 2023, a Fauda crew member Matan Meir died from life-threatening wounds sustained in a booby-trapped Hamas tunnel.

Despite the Oct. 7 trauma, the Fauda creator remains upbeat about the future.

“So, we are reinventing the show just as, in some ways, Israel will need to be reinvented; we need a new IDF, a new government, a new prime minister because Israel is going to need to be rebuilt,” Issacharoff assessed.

However, he emphasized that Oct. 7 affected virtually all of Israeli society.

“I don’t think there is anybody in Israel today who doesn’t know someone either killed or kidnapped on or since October 7.” 

While Issacharoff, as a professional investigative journalist, is not afraid to criticize Israeli policies when needed, he has no tolerance for individuals who try to somehow justify the ruthless massacres of Israeli women, children and Holocaust survivors.

“Now we realize that no matter what happens, even if Hamas slaughters thousands of Israelis, these people, these ‘good’ people, don’t care. At the end of the day, you can’t see it as anything more than antisemitism. It is pure antisemitism.”