Behind the Making of Fauda’s October 7 Episodes

Yes aired a special warning to viewers on Sunday, saying episodes 7 and 8 of the hit series "Fauda" are difficult to watch and can be skipped without missing the season’s plot. The warning came because the two episodes deal directly with the October 7 massacre, one of the most traumatic events in Israeli society.

After the episodes aired, Avi Issacharoff, who created the series with Lior Raz, Omri Givon, the director and writer of the two episodes, and Yaakov Zada Daniel, who plays Eli, discussed the production on Be.po’s new podcast strip, Extra Be.po. Issacharoff said the episodes return to 3:00 a.m. on October 7, when the security establishment began to realize something was wrong, and show Ronen Bar, then head of the Shin Bet, rushing Tequila teams south as the rockets, infiltration, and the splitting up of one team member unfold.

Givon said he initially had no desire to work on a project about that day, but came around because the story mattered to the characters and because he wanted to explore the aftermath and trauma. Zada Daniel said he appreciated telling the story through Fauda’s familiar characters, calling it a way to release what was “buried” in him and saying he felt depressed by his helplessness on October 7, when he was at home.

Issacharoff said the season was rewritten after the attack, because “nothing” from the earlier version remained relevant. He said producer Omri Shanhar proposed a “bubble episode” focused on what the characters experienced that day, which he saw as a mission for Fauda’s global audience in 190 countries. He said the goal was to let viewers understand the catastrophe through the characters they have followed for four and a half seasons.

The creators said they struggled with how graphic to make the scenes. Givon said they did not want to exploit the horror or turn it into “snuff,” but also did not want to minimize it, so they showed only fragments of some atrocities. Zada Daniel said he visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza and the Nova festival site so the event would be “in my blood,” and Givon said some actors broke down while filming scenes in which they had to aim and fire at children.