Revenge with a capital R is the theme of the fifth and probable final season of Fauda, the popular Israeli television show created by Lior Raz and Avi Isaacharoff and now available on the Netflix streaming platform.

Consisting of eleven episodes, and ably directed by Omri Givon, it is constructed around a date and an event that is searingly etched into Israel’s consciousness.

On October 7, 2023, around 5,000 Hamas terrorists attacked kibbutzim, towns, army bases and a music festival in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip. Roughly 1,200 civilians and soldiers were killed and 251 were abducted as hostages, the worst single atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust. Two weeks later, Israel invaded Gaza, sparking what would be a two-year war during which 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 Hamas combatants, were killed.

This catastrophe halted the production of further Fauda episodes. While its first four seasons were about an Israeli army unit tasked with rooting out terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza, the current series focuses on the aftermath of October 7.

The operative word here is tha’ar, an Arabic word denoting vengeance. On the one hand, an Israeli Bedouin seeks to avenge the death of his son, who was murdered by Hamas gunmen. On the other hand, a Hamas cell in Marseille, France, plots to wreak vengeance........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)