TEL AVIV, Israel – Israeli television thriller Fauda has achieved a major cultural breakthrough in the Arab world, reaching No. 1 on Netflix in Lebanon just days after the international release of its fifth season.
The accomplishment is particularly notable because the new season is deeply shaped by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 massacre and its psychological aftermath in Israeli society.
Netflix released Season 5 internationally on Sept. 8. Within days, Fauda had become the most-watched Netflix show in Lebanon and entered the Top 10 in several other Arab and Muslim-majority countries.
Israeli actor Lior Raz, who stars as Doron Kavillio, and Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff created the series.
Netflix confirms that the fifth season is now streaming globally and that Raz and Issacharoff remain its creators and executive producers.
The success in Lebanon is especially noteworthy given the country’s continuing hostility toward Israel and the years of conflict between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization.
According to The Jewish Chronicle, Fauda reached No. 1 in Lebanon only two days after its international Netflix release, based on rankings compiled by streaming analytics service FlixPatrol.
The same rankings placed the series sixth in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, eighth in Bahrain and Qatar, ninth in Egypt, and tenth in Turkey, Morocco and Oman.
Those figures differ from some subsequent reports about individual country rankings as the Netflix charts changed, but the broader picture is unmistakable: an Israeli television series dealing directly with October 7 has attracted substantial audiences across the Arab world.
October 7 Changed Fauda
The fifth season might have looked very different had October 7 never happened.
Work on the season had already begun before the massacre, but that day’s events fundamentally changed the series’ direction.
Issacharoff told Netflix that the writers realized a program so closely connected to Israeli and Middle Eastern reality could not simply continue as though October 7 had not occurred.
Season 5 is set largely two years after the massacre and follows Doron and other characters struggling with trauma while becoming involved in another dangerous operation.
Two episodes return directly to October 7 and portray the characters experiencing the attack itself.
Raz said the objective was not simply to recreate what happened but to place the show’s fictional characters within circumstances shaped by the real events.
The creators also wrestled with how to depict a national trauma that remains intensely personal for Israelis.
Issacharoff told Netflix that writing the October 7 episodes was emotionally difficult and that the creative team worried about causing additional pain to people who had lost loved ones.
The resulting season deals heavily with trauma, grief, revenge and the human consequences of prolonged conflict.
Raz said the characters are portrayed increasingly as damaged people dealing with the psychological cost of war rather than simply as warriors moving from one operation to another.
An Israeli Story Crossing Borders
That makes the show’s reception in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world particularly significant.
Fauda has always distinguished itself through extensive use of both Hebrew and Arabic and through storylines built around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Its latest season, however, arrives in a dramatically different regional environment.
The October 7 massacre triggered a war that reshaped Israel and reverberated across the Middle East. Lebanon itself became directly involved when Hezbollah began attacking Israel from the north on Oct. 8, 2023.
Yet audiences in Lebanon are now watching an Israeli-produced drama whose fifth season explicitly explores Israeli trauma resulting from October 7.
The show’s success does not necessarily indicate political sympathy for Israel among its viewers. Streaming rankings reveal what people are watching, not why they are watching it or what conclusions they draw from it.
But the numbers demonstrate something culturally significant.
Israeli storytelling is reaching audiences across borders that politics, war and ideology have struggled to bridge.
Raz himself has said he hopes the series can contribute to conversation rather than simply reinforce divisions.
He told Netflix that he hopes viewers will understand the price of war and the importance of finding another way forward.
For an Israeli series born from the experiences of its Israeli creators, rewritten after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and focused heavily on the wounds October 7 left behind, becoming the most-watched Netflix program in Lebanon represents a remarkable cultural moment.
Whatever brings Lebanese viewers to Fauda, they are watching an Israeli story.
And right now, they are watching it more than anything else on Netflix.’
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