Just as Tolstoy was to Russia. Understanding Israel, its wounds and its struggles through a TV series

Great novels and great television series have one thing in common: they are perhaps the most effective tools for truly understanding a country. More so than statistics, more so than politicians’ speeches, and sometimes even more so than history books. Because they recount not only what a society does, but what it dreams of, what it fears and, above all, what it is unable to say about itself. To understand Russia, the tsars alone were not enough: we needed Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. For France, there was Balzac’s Comédie humaine. Dickens portrayed industrial England better than any parliamentary report. And to understand a certain side of Italy – its elites and its political opportunism – one could always turn to The Leopard. The novel was, and naturally remains, the barometer of an era. Today, however, that role is increasingly being fulfilled by major television series as well. The Wire was a great American novel about Baltimore, drugs, the police and the failure of institutions.

Borgen has portrayed Scandinavian politics better than many essays. Italy is struggling somewhat in the vast market of streaming platforms: in the global imagination, it is still primarily associated with Gomorra. What a shame.

Israel, on the other hand, is a particularly interesting case because the two forms of storytelling coexist. Alongside a rich body of contemporary literature (Eshkol Nevo, Assaf Gavron, Roy Chen), an extraordinary television series industry has emerged, capable of transforming deeply Israeli stories into global hits on streaming platforms. Shtisel, Teheran, Hostages and, above all, Fauda have transcended borders, languages and cultures.

And it is precisely "Fauda" that is the most surprising case. An Israeli series, largely performed in Arabic, which has managed to win over audiences far beyond Israel, including those in Arab countries. A paradox only at first glance: because Fauda does not simply recount the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores fear, the obsession with security, trauma, revenge, the everyday familiarity with violence, but also the intimacy and almost claustrophobic closeness between two worlds that are at war with one another and yet, at the same time, know each other intimately. If you wish to grasp something of the Israel that is preparing to go to the polls with the events of 7 October still fresh in its mind, watch it. And straight afterwards, to catch your breath, watch Shtisel.

Allow me a brief digression. Shtisel tells the story of a Haredi family in Jerusalem without turning them into caricatures. Religion, marriages, the Torah, rules. But above all, desires, love, jealousy and regrets. Akiva is an artist and a dreamer, caught between what he wants and what the community expects of him. His father, Shulem, on the other hand, belongs to a world in which family, tradition and religion are inseparable. It also offers a glimpse into that part of the ultra-Orthodox world which maintains a profound distance from Zionism, military service and its symbols. Shtisel is almost the opposite of Fauda: there, Israel is silence, family and faith; here, it is noise, war and security. Together, they depict two Israels coexisting within the same country.

But before we can relax, there’s Fauda. And there’s that still-bleeding wound known as 7 October. Don’t watch it because it tells ‘the truth’. Be wary of anyone who claims to possess the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: they usually hold that truth whilst sitting comfortably a few thousand kilometres away from Tel Aviv and Gaza. Perhaps they spend twenty-five minutes standing at the Venice Film Festival applauding a film, hang the Palestinian flag from their balcony, or march in a procession chanting ‘Hamas, Hezbollah, eternal glory to Nasrallah’.

Fauda does something more interesting and more unsettling: it captures the mood. The fear, the trauma, the anger, the desire for revenge, and the doubts about revenge. And above all, a word that, since 7 October, has resonated across Israel from right to left: security. Never again.

Israelis are arguing about Netanyahu, Gaza, the hostages, the war, the government and who is to blame for 7 October. They are arguing fiercely, as only they know how. But beneath it all lies one conviction: what happened that day must never be allowed to happen again. It is from this wound that the new Fauda is born. Doron and the others are not superheroes. Lior Raz has described them as ‘broken warriors’. They fight the enemy, but also what the enemy has left inside them. 7 October is no longer just a date: it is a presence. And this is where a series succeeds where Western debate often fails. For a few hours, it forces you to look at a society from the inside rather than judge it from the outside.

Take the IDF. For us, it is ‘the Israeli army’. In Israel, it is somewhat more complicated. It is a conscript army, with a vast system of reservists. Within the IDF, one finds sons, brothers, university friends, and the neighbour who works at an IT company in the morning and receives a call from his unit in the evening. The army is one of the institutions upon which Israel has built its security. This does not mean it cannot make mistakes. It can, and seriously so. Soldiers and officers can commit crimes or make errors; the leadership can bear enormous responsibility. 7 October demonstrated that even institutions considered rock-solid can fail. But it is one thing to establish who is responsible. It is quite another to put an entire institution in the dock.

This leads us to "Naza", the documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor built around twenty-four anonymous testimonies from the military and intelligence services. The allegations are extremely serious and must be heard and verified. The IDF rejects them and also disputes the inability to verify the witnesses’ identities, roles and direct knowledge of the events. Then politics got involved, with the inevitable race to see who could make the most outrageous claims. There were even those who proposed stripping the directors of their citizenship. Utter madness. Even Israel has its own Vannacci.

However, that is not the point. Twenty-four anonymous testimonies may raise questions and force the army to respond. They are no substitute for a fact-finding investigation. What is needed is evidence, documents, individual accountability and that commission of inquiry into 7 October which Israel will have to face sooner or later. Those who are at fault must pay.

Between Naza and Fauda, however, I choose Fauda. Because it’s more uncomfortable. Doron is no IDF saint. He is secular, tormented, often unmanageable. His comrades have different lives, personalities and religious sensibilities. They argue, they are afraid, they make mistakes, they lose friends and parts of themselves. But there is one thing they do not argue about: Israel must be defended. Not Netanyahu. Israel.

It is a distinction that outsiders still fail to grasp. One can oppose a government and still feel part of the same country. One can detest a prime minister and yet put on a uniform when that country comes under attack. One can hold the generals to account for the disaster of 7 October without regarding the army as an enemy of society. Fauda captures this turmoil better than a hundred television debates. It portrays a nation heading to the polls with a wound that is still raw, and which must decide not only who will govern it, but what kind of security to build after the previous system collapsed in a matter of hours.

That is why Fauda should be shown in universities. Not to explain that Israel is right or that the Palestinians are wrong. But to do something that today seems almost subversive: to understand before judging. Once upon a time, it took a thousand pages of Tolstoy. Today, sometimes, all it takes is to switch on Netflix. And to discover that one of the most interesting ‘novels’ about Israel in the aftermath of 7 October is not a novel at all. It is Fauda.