A reservist in the Israeli army, Matan Meir, 38, co-produced the hit series, the third season of which is set in the Gaza Strip and concerns clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces.
Saturday, November 11, the Israeli series team Fauda (“chaos” in Arabic) made an announcement on his Instagram account: “We are absolutely devastated to announce that one of the family members of FaudaMatan Meir was killed during an operation in Gaza. The third season of this series, created by Avi Issacharoff and broadcast on Netflix, is set in Gaza.
“Matan participated in the second and third seasons” by Faudarecalls Avi Issacharoff in an interview with AFP, summoning someone from “very positive”, “always ready to help”responsible for organizing the recordings.
Matan Meir, a 38-year-old producer and reservist soldier, was killed Friday evening along with four other soldiers during a military operation in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces are fighting the movement, the army said. “I feel devastated, there is no end in sight, we are living through the worst times in the history of this country”declared one of the directors, Rotem Shamir, at his funeral, where his coffin was carried by six comrades from his unit.
He is not the only one in the team caught up in the war: one of the actors in the series, Idan Amedi (Sagui), posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) on October 12 showing him in military uniform, called to his duty as a reservist in a combat unit, adding “This is not a scene from Faudait is real life.”
“Reality is much more complicated” than in “Fauda”
Its raw depiction of the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians has largely contributed to its popularity Fauda : ubiquitous security restrictions, attacks, night operations of the army in Palestinian territories. Despite the apparent parallels between the fiction and Israel’s war against Hamas, “we are far from reality, because reality is much more complicated than anything we have written”Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff, co-author of the series, told AFP.
According to the Israeli military, about 240 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip during the October 7 Hamas attack, an unprecedented event since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. “Unfortunately, I cannot imagine a rescue operation like the one we see in our fiction to bring back all the hostages alive. I am pessimistic”says this long-time critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies.
“Just like a human”
Avi Issacharoff says he witnessed the October 7 attacks “just like a human”, without thinking about the intrigues he has worked for years about the Israeli-Palestinian chaos. “We entered our anti-missile room… and that’s when we found out it wasn’t just a few missiles, it was a terrorist infiltration.”, he said. With Lior Raz (Doron), co-author and one of the protagonists of Fauda, “we went to Sderot on the second day to get the residents of the city out of the fire zone”, he says, as the two friends both served in special forces, some of which operated undercover and were inspired Fauda.
At least 11,180 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, according to the Hamas Health Ministry. The Palestinian Islamic movement’s bloody attack on Israel left approximately 1,200 dead, the majority of them civilians.