Faulting Fauda…
by Gerald A. Honigman
I don’t know…
Maybe I haven’t watched enough of Fauda, another hit Netflix’s series yet. My son-in-law introduced me to it recently. He’s addicted, and well into Season # 3, while I’m just getting started. My dear friend Bob tries to assure me as well…
Its episodes involve an elite undercover unit of Israeli soldiers and other security specialists who go deep into the lion’s den to capture (or, if necessary dispose) of Arabs who’ve wantonly and deliberately murdered Israeli Jews…Cojones muy mucho–seguro !
My Fauda problem started right from the get-go.
Prior to the first main scene of the unit entering an Arab village to nab or nail one of those heroes mentioned above, there’s very little background provided for many young, naive Fauda viewers as to why these Hebrews are surreptitiously invading a joyful Arab wedding.
All that I recall is perhaps twenty seconds or so of a totally verbal account in which the team is told by its supervisor beforehand that their target for capture murdered over a hundred Israelis…
Just words, no visuals, which more and more people depend upon these days to drive home a point so it stays ingrained in one’s consciousness. Hence the popularity of power point presentations and such.
Why were not a few photos or short photo sequences (instead of just several easily forgotten words) provided to viewers illustrating the horrendous reasons why the team had to be sent in to hunt down the Arab perpetrators in the first place?
The episode unfolds showing the team plotting to invade a peaceful Arab wedding and waiting for their supposedly already assassinated target to arrive, and then killing two other Arabs in graphic detail, including the young groom. A weeping wife, mother, and so forth follow. You get the picture. And there’s no holding back on graphic scenes of Jews killing Arabs, complete with blood gushing out either.
Unlike what Fauda’s viewers had (have?) to do to contemplate regarding the raison d’etre of the Israeli team, lacking any visuals to support such an understanding, graphic visuals were not spared regarding the Jews’ Arab victims.
I’ve heard that many Arabs watch this series. That’s good–I guess.
But not if an alleged “moral equivalency” is the message being consciously or unconsciously conveyed and received by many viewers. Is that really the aim of the producers of this Israeli series–or at least is a tolerated outcome of faulty Fauda scripts deliberately leaving out what’s minimally required to put to the lie the moral equivalency manure?
I’m curious…When are the Arabs going to come out with a television series painstakingly trying to show the Jewish side to the Arab-Israeli conflict?
I’ve also heard from folks who are far ahead of me in the episodes that Israel still comes out looking good on the balance sheet. I certainly hope so.
Is it that this is the trade off that must be made nowadays, comparing Israel’s enemies– who deliberately target, disembowel, decapitate, and so forth Jewish babes, grandmas, students, and so forth–with those trying to bring them to justice?
Can’t–or won’t–a tv network allow truth to be told?
A picture is indeed often worth a thousand words.
Why not, instead of just briefly mentioning 100 or more dead Jews deliberately slaughtered–unlike Arab civilians usually killed because their heroes use them as human shields–adding some brief photos or photo sequences showing such things as blown-up civilian bus and pizzeria carnage, and Arabs then building a museum displaying fake Jewish body parts hanging from the ceiling afterwards to brag about their deeds?
Or, perhaps Arabs stopping civilian cars and shooting pregnant mothers in the abdomen (where the fetus is developing) as well as elsewhere at point blank range along with their other young children strapped into car seats? Or, pictures right on the Internet of Arabs waving bloodied hands outside windows after gutting Jews who accidentally strayed into their towns? And all of these examples–and far too many others–validly documented, by the way. Here’s some for consideration below:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-tv-praises-attackers-from-2000-ramallah-lynching-watchdog/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/several-injured-in-bus-blaze-in-jerusalem/; https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=sbarro+pissa+bombing+in+israel&fr=yhs-iry-fullyhosted_003&hspart=iry&hsimp=yhs-fullyhosted_003&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcommentisfreewatch.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F02%2Fsbarro-bombing.jpg#id=2&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcommentisfreewatch.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F02%2Fsbarro-bombing.jpg&action=click
Okay, I’m not asking for Netflix to display dismembered Jewish body parts on television.
But surely there’s a better way than just using a few introductory words to drive home the barbarism of what the Jews are dealing with–and why they risk their own security personnel’s lives going after these Arab “heroes” who (either they or their families) wind up getting paid a substantial monthly pension for their heroism.
Years ago, Steven Spielberg played the moral equivalence game as well in his movie about the Arab slaughter of Israel athletes at the Munich Olympics.
I have a friend (a well-known author) who subsequently contacted me from Los Angeles to give me the good news that my article dealing with the movie, Munich, was hand delivered by herself to Steven’s mother in her kosher vegetarian restaurant in order to deliver it to her son. This was totally done all on her own. I found out after the fact.
We were out of touch for some years, but recently, when we reconnected, I asked Rachel if I was dreaming or if this had really happened. She laughed and assured me that it most certainly did. And here it is below. The bulk of the material directly related to Spielberg’s movie comes in at around the 30th paragraph from the bottom. Here’s those excerpts from a few versions of that article, the first on my own site, “Steven Meet Mahmoud”:
“…And Spielberg played right into all of the above’s hypocritical hands.
When I first got wind at what he was up to early last summer, I wrote two articles, “Steven–Say It Isn’t So” and “Can Kushner.” Unfortunately, it appears that those of us who were watching had plenty to be concerned about.
I know I’ll be criticized for what I’ll say next, but here it comes anyway.
I will not see Munich. Not even when it eventually makes it to the video stores.
Spielberg does not need my money (though he’s received a lot of it over the decades), but I will not give him anymore. And here’s my reason…
Would Steven or any fair-minded person relegate, for example, the chronicling of the struggle of Blacks for civil rights in America to David Duke and the Klan?
Absurd…correct?
Yet Spielberg chose Tony Kushner, a nominal Jew who has openly and repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel’s very existence, as the script writer for Munich, the story of Israel’s attempt to bring to justice the murderers of its eleven athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
So what did Steven or any of us expect would be the outcome of such an endeavor?
Did it require Einstein (a Zionist, by the way) to figure this one out?
Is there not a difference between Arab innocents dying by accident (usually because they were used as human shields, purposely put in harm’s way to protect the rats in their dens) and Jewish innocents murdered because they were deliberately targeted? And the more innocent the latter the better for shock value?
How many Arab buses, restaurants, shopping places, and such have been blown up by the Jew of the Nations?
Yet moral equivalency is evidently the name of Spielberg’s game. But, again, given the nature of his chosen script writer’s beast, what else could be expected?
It has come to be accepted that most of Hollywood’s Jews and non-Jews alike will hold Israel up to a literally suicidal level of conduct expected of no other nation. Certainly not of Arabs.
Thirty million truly stateless Kurds saw their one best chance at independence sacrificed on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism after World War I. Will Spielberg and Kushner collaborate to tell their story? Or that of millions of others victimized in the name of the Arab nation as well?
Don’t hold your breath.
But the microscopic Jew of the Nations is simply expected to bare the necks of its kids so that Arabs can have their 22nd state and second one in “Palestine.”
That the Michael Moore, Angelina Jolie, Richard Gere & Co. crew espouse such things is bad enough…
For Jews to join them is nauseating.
And for Spielberg to willingly lend the power of his film making to such a travesty by placing the story into the hands of a person who doesn’t even believe that Israel has a right to exist is unforgivable.
Many will refrain from speaking out because of the money and efforts Spielberg contributes to the cause of dead Jews.
Shame on him and them as well.
The miracle of Israel reborn owes no human an explanation.
Crocodile tears and alleged sympathy for dead Jews a la the Holocaust simply doesn’t cut it in the post-Auschwitz era. Not that it ever did.
The Jews are back where King David continued to forge them into a nation over three thousand years ago. And in their same capital, Jerusalem–despite the trials and tribulations of one imperial conquest after the other. How many other nations can accurately state the same?
And they will continue to make mistakes from time to time—despite their best intentions—like all others do. The difference is that these will continue to be overwhelmingly mistakes, not injustices purposely committed without trying to reach an honorable compromise with their neighbors. Can Arabs say the same? Yet look at whom the Hollywood crowd chooses to single out and point its collective moral finger at. Indeed, Spielberg’s colleague, Michael Moore, has labeled Israel one of the world’s top three evils.
A nation should not have to be decimated before it receives its share of justice.
Empathy for live Jews is what is and has always been required…and, once again, understanding that, as in the story of Munich, in it’s struggle to survive, Israel, like all other nations, will make some mistakes.
But if any nation has a right to exist, it is that of the Jews—who, short of suicide (demanded even by the Arabs’ so-called moderates, like Abbas) have tried as hard as humanly possible to reach accommodations with those who claim, like Steven’s fellow nominally Jew buddy, Kushner, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the Jew of the Nations has no such right at all.
So Steven, meet your new friend, Mahmoud…”
http://www.geraldahonigman.com/blog/2005/12/19/steven-meet-mahmoud-spielberg-s-new-movie-munich/
http://intelligence-summit.blogspot.com/2005/12/steven-meet-mahmoudso-what-did-you.html
I mention the above now because we don’t need an updated version of Spielberg and one of his favorite anti-Zionist film writer friend’s, Tony Kushner’s, moral equivalence message. Kushner is openly against Israel’s very existence.
I’m truly hoping that I am wrong about Fauda. I will continue to watch it as time permits…and would love to be able to offer my apologies later if warranted.