‘Fauda’ writers nixed Hamas invasion pitch last year because it was too unbelievable: ‘Guys, what are the chances?’
The writers of the hit Netflix drama “Fauda” scrapped a storyline pitch last year that involved Hamas invading Israel and taking over a kibbutz — because they deemed the idea too outlandish.
“We had an argument about it, and I remember saying, ‘Guys, what are the chances that tens of terrorists will get to the border and the IDF wouldn’t have any indication of it, that they wouldn’t be shot down?’ ” co-creator Avi Issacharoff recently recalled to the Jewish News. ” ‘They’d be killed before they got close, surely.”
Series co-creator Lior Raz had suggested the then-unimaginable plotline — where the Palestinian terrorists break through the Gazan border and hold an entire kibbutz hostage — while in the process of helping to write season five.
But Issacharoff dismissed the idea, telling the other writers that the Israeli Defense Forces would never allow Hamas to get that far into the country.
Unfortunately, what Issacharoff thought unthinkable did come to pass — and in a much grander scale — with Hamas invading Israel on Oct. 7 and killing more than 1,200 people and taking another 240 hostage. The sneak attack sparked a continuing conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and threatens to turn into World War III.
Issacharoff, also a seasoned Israeli journalist, said the Oct. 7 attack left him in shock, and now, as with many others in the Jewish state, he’s left to wonder why his leadership failed to prevent Hamas’ assault despite the many warning signs.
“There were indications they were planning this. Israeli intelligence was told they were planning it a year ago,” he said, referencing reports that Jewish officials shrugged off Hamas’ plans as “totally imaginative” and impossible to carry out.
Issacharoff said he believes that the IDF failed to take the warnings seriously because the military’s focus was on containing Hamas rather than taking an active role in dismantling the terror group.
“If you look at Hamas through a Western, logical point of view, then it is nuts what they did, knowing that if they tried to kill five soldiers or 50 soldiers then we were going to try and destroy them, kill them all,” he told the Jewish News. “And then they killed 1,200 people, kidnapped 240.”
The “Fauda” creator said the attack left Israelis in a collective “post-traumatic national phenomenon,” with every citizen having ties to at least one person who was killed or kidnapped on or since Oct. 7.
The “Fauda” team lost Matan Meir, a producer, in November when he was killed during a battle against Hamas in Gaza. “Fauda” star Idan Amedi was also injured in combat while deployed across the border.
In the wake of the terrorist attack and the ongoing war in Gaza, Issacharoff noted that the hit show cannot proceed as normal, with the writers looking to make a major overhaul in season five to reflect the state of Israel.
To that end, Issacharoff worries about the global perception of the war, slamming those who criticize Israel as ignorant of the atrocity that befell the Jewish state.
“They say we deserved it,” he said of the opposition. “They try and contextualize the slaughter of innocent people. They are so stupid; they use words like colonialism. But Israel wasn’t in Gaza since 2005. … I can’t get over how ignorant these people are.
“At the end of the day, you can’t see it as anything more than antisemitism. It is pure antisemitism,” he said of Israel’s detractors.
“So excuse my French, but f–k them,” said the writer — whose show involves a top Israeli agent who “comes out of retirement to hunt for a Palestinian fighter he thought he’d killed, setting a chaotic chain of events into motion,” according to Netflix.
