The creators of "Fauda," the Israeli thriller about undercover operatives hunting militants, say their show has built a quiet following in Lebanon — an enemy state with no diplomatic relations with Israel — three years after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that reshaped the region.
The series, which premiered in 2015 and runs on Netflix outside Israel, follows a fictional Israeli special forces unit operating in Palestinian areas. Its creators, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, drew on their own service in an elite undercover unit, and the show has been praised in Israel for its gritty portrayal of the conflict's human cost on both sides.
That Lebanese viewers would seek it out is unusual. Lebanon and Israel remain legally at war, and Lebanese law bars citizens from contact with Israeli entities. The show's Arabic-language dialogue and its Palestinian characters, many played by Arab Israeli actors, may explain part of its appeal across the border, the creators suggested.
"Fauda" — Arabic for "chaos" — became one of Netflix's most-watched foreign-language series after the streaming platform picked it up in 2016, and it has run for four seasons. The Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took roughly 250 hostages, prompted a war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and drawn in Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Interest in the show spiked internationally after Oct. 7, with viewers turning to it for a dramatized window into a conflict suddenly dominating global headlines. The creators have said the war made the series' themes more urgent, even as they resisted turning it into direct commentary on current events.
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that dominates southern Lebanon, began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas, displacing tens of thousands on both sides of the border. Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon in October 2024 and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut airstrike the previous month.
Against that backdrop, the creators described the Lebanese viewership as a reminder that television can cross lines that politics cannot. The show's fifth season, produced before the recent escalation, is set largely in Europe rather than the Middle East.
