16/09/2026
I’ve just watched Season 5 of Fauda and I’m going to say this as strongly as I can:
EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH IT.
Not because it is comfortable viewing. It isn’t.
Fauda, created by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, has always taken viewers into the dark, complicated reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are no easy answers and no sanitised version of events.
But Season 5 is different.
Episodes 7 and 8 are devastating.
They bring the horror of 7 October 2023 to the screen, the Hamas massacre, the attacks on Israeli communities, the terror, the murder and the desperate fight to survive.
We have all seen the footage. The kibbutzim. The burning homes. Families fleeing. Innocent people hunted down. People murdered and taken hostage.
But seeing these events reconstructed through drama is profoundly different. For a few hours, you aren’t simply watching a news report about something that happened.
You are placed inside it.
I found it genuinely harrowing.
And knowing what the cast and crew themselves have experienced makes these episodes even more difficult to watch. Fauda actor Idan Amedi was seriously wounded while serving in Gaza, while production team member Matan Meir was killed in action.
This isn’t a distant war being recreated decades later.
This is their reality. Their country. Their communities. Their friends. Their families.
Perhaps that is why these episodes feel so extraordinarily authentic.
The creators didn’t need to invent the horror.
They had to recreate it.
And here is why I think people,
particularly those who have somehow convinced themselves that 7 October was exaggerated, misunderstood or somehow deserved, should watch it.
Because behind every headline was a human being.
Behind every statistic was a family.
Behind every image of a destroyed home was someone who had lived there.
And behind every hostage figure is a real person whose family has endured unimaginable pain.
7 October was not a slogan. It was not a metaphor. It was not “resistance” in some romanticised political fantasy.
It was a day of terror in which innocent civilians were deliberately murdered, abused and abducted.
Watch Fauda Season 5.
Watch Episodes 7 and 8.
Then ask yourself whether you really understand what Israelis experienced that day.
From Hertfordshire Friends of Israel: please watch it. 🇮🇱
Some stories entertain us.
Some educate us.
And some force us to confront a reality we would rather look away from.
This is one of those stories.
