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Netflix fuels war on truth in new season of Fauda

Netflix fuels war on truth in its new series “Fauda,” which purports to show the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a distortion that waters down Israel’s oppressive brutality while exaggerating the threat from the Palestinians. The 3 season series is so disgusting I am almost tempted to tell Netflix to F-off and unsubscribe

By Ray Hanania

Netflix fuels war on truth with its 3rd season of its series “Fauna.” With the coronavirus forcing families around the world to stay in their homes and watch television programs on popular systems like Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, but it’s like going from one virus to another.

Recently, Netflix announced the release of their 3rd series of the Israeli-made drama “Fauda.”

I couldn’t get past the first episode of “Fauda”, the pro-Israel and racist Netflix drama that whitewashes Israel’s undercover violence against the Palestinians, when it premiered in 2015 without getting nauseous.

Netflix’s series “Fauna” the lopsided pro-Israel spin on their oppression of the Palestinians. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The storylines and depictions were dominated by an undercurrent of righteous Israelis fighting the ugliness of the Palestinian existence in the West Bank, always focused on Palestinians planning vicious terrorist attacks while the Israelis actually did all of the killings.

Two seasons of lies and distortions were too much for me. But to see the truth and beauty you often must sit through the lies and the ugliness of programs like Netflix’s “Fauda,” one of the most deceitful portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I have seen in years.

Season 3 of Fauda expands its anti-Palestinian propaganda from the West Bank into the besieged Gaza Strip.

Fauda’s worst crime is in how it downplays the harsh reality of Palestinian life, brutalized constantly not only by racist Apartheid policies that discriminate against Arab Christians and Muslims but also by Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilian protestors, young and old.

Palestinians have no rights when Israel’s secret service comes slamming through your door – they don’t knock. They break-in grabbing Palestinian civilians and jailing them for months and even years without ever issuing charges or evidence and purely to silence political dissidence.

Life on the West Bank under Israel’s brutal military thumb is bad enough as it is, but it is even worse in the Gaza Strip. There, Israeli propaganda asserts falsely that Israel left the strip to Palestinian self-rule and Hamas which turned it into a “terrorist” camp.

Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison. Israel tightly controls everything that goes in and out through the border and Israel frequently kills any civilian who tries to circumvent the blockade, as they did in assaulting and murdering nine passengers in a flotilla of boats in May 2010 that tried to break the blockade. Nine of the civilian passengers were killed when a heavily armed Fauda-like raid dropped in illegally in international waters and began shooting passengers.

Ten Israeli soldiers were wounded and that alone turned the tide of propaganda against the Palestinian victims. Whenever and Israeli is wounded or killed, it is an enormous international crime. When a Palestinian is killed, it becomes fodder for a cheap storyline on program’s like Netflix’s morally bankrupt series, Fauda.

The fact that one of the civilian victims on the ship was an American citizen didn’t even phase the media. The same American legal system that jumps to prosecute Palestinians for every possible bruise and bump against racist Jewish settler occupiers just shrugs for the loss of American life when the atrocity is committed by Israeli soldiers.

Fauda is intended to be a form of societal anesthesia, to blur Israel’s brutal image while downplaying Palestinian suffering. Sure, it strives to show the conflict, but almost always the conflict is morally one-sided. Israeli killings are presented in the context of “justification” driven by the need to “protect” Jewish lives, while every Palestinian action is presented as a sinister anti-Semitic act of hatred at its worst.

The series openly brags that it is based on the experiences of the Israeli Defense Forces. I’ve learned in 45 years of journalism that organizations that brutalize human beings always wrap themselves in positive linguistics using words like “Defense” to spin the truth.

The IDF defends nothing except its atrocities and assaults against mostly unarmed, defenseless Palestinian civilians.

Let me write one of the scripts for Fauda and I will show you the reality of Israel’s atrocities and brutality. The Israelis won’t be heroines but instead will be the violent and sinister hypocrites.

Fauda comes from a long history of effective Israeli propaganda that defends the indefensible through the manipulation of a willing Western media at every level, journalism, theater, film and print. The first was the 1958 publication of the book “Exodus” which covered-up the true extent of Israeli atrocities claiming to limit the violence to extremist groups like the Irgun and the Stern Gang — something actor Paul Newman soft-spun as not reflecting the “true spirit” of Israel’s drive to survive in a sea of Nazi-loving Arabs in the movie produced in 1960.

We know that claim was a lie because the leaders of both organizations, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir both became prime ministers of the State of Israel with the support of Israeli society.

War criminals usually are punished but in Israel, they are celebrated, honored and given political power.

Yes, the lie of “Exodus” became the storyline for a “tiny” Israel’s fight against the “hate-driven” Goliath Arab World and was turned into a movie in 1960, and every time there is a conflict between Israeli and the Palestinians, American television owners broadcast “Exodus” to help further numb Americans to the truth.

It’s our fault as Arabs that we never recognized until it was too late the power of the media, from newspapers, TV, radio to movies and even books until it was too late.

Growing up in America, all the Arabs I knew wanted their sons and daughters to be doctors, not journalists. I was one of the few who changed in the early 1970s waging an uphill struggle to add truth to American journalism coverage of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East.

It was a lonely and often painful experience with American newspaper editors berating and even reprimanding me for showcasing Palestinian rights against the truth of Israel’s lies.

The Arab community had no idea about that struggle because they didn’t care about media or journalism, while the Israelis made it the frontline of their propaganda war against truth.

Just once I would love to watch an Exodus-like movie or a Netflix series that dramatizes Israel’s atrocities and the suffering of the Palestinians.

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rayhanania

Op-Ed writer, author, radio host, podcaster at The Arab Daily News

RAY HANANIA — Op-Ed writer, author, radio host, podcaster

Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.

Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).

Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.

Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.

His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.

Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.

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