The best thing about Fauda has never been the gunfights. It is that nobody on screen tells you what to think. From one scene to the next, family men become killers, and terrorists fall in love, and the audience is trusted to digest the moral complications without reductive political messaging. In this era of polarisation – especially towards the Middle East – that is what makes it such a breath of fresh air. It is art. That is why the series continues to be such a global success, especially in the Arab world. Which is why a little-noticed scene in episode one of the new season, set in a safe house above a halal butcher’s on the edge of the old port in Marseille, is so arresting. Eli, who has lost his family in the October 7 atrocities, is there. So is his old comrade Salem, a Bedouin tracker from Rahat, whose son Yusuf was murdered that same day. Before they go out to find the Hamas terrorist who killed him, they pray, side-by-side, to their different gods. This was no diversity schmaltz; after all, nobody could accuse Fauda of being sentimental. No, what was really going on was deep… New post. Link in first reply: