ICRC takedown of ‘Fauda’ hits a nerve

The popular Israeli TV series ‘Fauda’ bases itself on the reality of Israeli occupation, specifically featuring the practice of ‘Mistarvim’, Israeli soldiers who pose as Palestinians in order to infiltrate, assassinate and kidnap Palestinians.

I can just as well admit that I don’t even care to watch it. Just as many Israelis seem to take pride in this series, many Palestinians view it as obnoxious racist propaganda, like George Zeidan in Haaretz, who called it “ignorant”, “dishonest”, “anti-Palestinian propaganda”. But my article is not a review of another militant fiction series, it is about the real life, ultra-nationalist drama that ensued when a connection between the fiction and real life was merely pointed towards, unfavorably, by an international humanitarian organization – the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

This Sunday the ICRC in Israel and Occupied (Palestinian) Territories launched a series of tweets, starting out with this:

Like many of you, this year we’ve also watched @FaudaOfficial and noted a number of violations of #IHL. [International Humanitarian Law]

The thread featured short clips from the series, mentioning what violations it was referring to –both Israeli and Palestinian — in an upbeat fashion. For example:

Some more:

What ensued was a concerted attack on ICRC by Israel apologists. They mostly tried to use disparaging humor, suggesting that ICRC can’t get fiction, as if the violations described don’t actually take place. The series creator Avi Issacharoff tweeted in response that violations of IHL are good sport for him.

The attacks on ICRC included an army of propaganda trolls, media outlets and government officials.

According to Israeli Channel 12 news, “the Red Cross tweeted against ‘Fauda’, the Israelis on the web returned fire.”

Was Channel 12 mocking both sides? No, they are completely serious and totally biased. The piece continues:

What does the international organization want from the successful Israeli series? The representative of the Red Cross in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority (sic) and Gaza (sic), posted yesterday (Sunday) a weird series of tweets, in which it decided to locate “violations” of International Humanitarian Law which featured in the popular Israeli series “Fauda”, which receives accolades around the world.

The article goes on to tell us about the “Israelis on the web” who “returned fire”. It goes like this:

Those who didn’t like the harassing of the successful Israeli series, and who saw the tweet series of the Red Cross as another example of the double-standard of the organization against Israel, are the operatives and web-influencers of the pro-Israel “DigiTell”. The network was formed three years ago by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, in order to provide an answer to anti-Israel activity on social networks. Today it includes more than 100 members, with more than 15 million followers in the social networks combined.

So, the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry under Gilad Erdan (who is now Israel’s UN Ambassador)– which has been the headquarters for the anti-BDS campaign, which included secret ‘black ops’ operations– has established an army of social media propagandists. This is something that Channel 12 News seems to comment upon favorably, because someone has to protect us from the supposedly anti-Israel ICRC.

Pro-Israel propagandist Hen Mazzig, who heads the Israel Education Department for StandWithUs Israel, tweeted:

So, the claim here appears to be that the series is fictional. But would Hen Mazzig bother to comment on a critique of the “Avengers”? Surely not. As much as the series is fiction, it is precisely because it is tied to Israel’s militant ethos and based upon some actual truths, that he defends it so vigorously.

Blogger David Collier from UK tweeted:

Collier is a disingenuous fellow whom I happened to cover in an article a few years back. He considers BDS a “terrorist movement” and is desperate to claim the movement as inherently antisemitic. It may be that the ICRC were going a bit off their usual script, but I can think of many more stupid things in this world than to educate people on customary human rights, even if it is on the back of a fictional series – especially when the violations actually take place in real life.

The Channel 12 piece ended with a rant by Ido Daniel, the head of the digital arena at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. This is the actual head of national digital propaganda, getting the last word:

The weird twitter attack by the Red Cross against one of the most successful Israeli series in the world is weird…

It’s kind of weird to say weird so many times. For a professional propagandist, it’s pretty pathetic. So, what’s the problem?

I am not surprised that they decided to attack precisely ‘Fauda’, which represents faithfully to tens of millions of watchers around the world, the complexity of life in Israel under the shade of the terror threats and the operations of the security forces which work night and day in order to prevent this.

So, wait a minute. Daniel is not saying that Fauda is fiction. No – he is “precisely” pointing out that it is a portrayal of a reality. So much for David Collier and Hen Mazzig’s defenses. The official Israeli government representative has spoken. You can say “Fauda” is just fiction, but he said it represents the Israeli reality “faithfully”.

Perfidy

The central theme of Fauda is what is know in international law as Perfidy. ICRC provides the definition of Perfidy from standard International Humanitarian Law:

Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with the intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy.

In other words, it is about conducting a military operation under the guise of being a civilian, or impersonating an individual who is supposed to be offered special humanitarian protection. This act is dangerous also because it puts civilians and humanitarian workers at risk, as it creates a suspicion that they may be involved in the hostilities.

Such perfidy is standard operating procedure for Israel. Two years ago, an Israeli commando unit, reportedly pretending to be humanitarian workers, got into trouble in Gaza after shooting and killing a senior Hamas military commander, Nour Baraka. Hamas fighters returned fire. Seven Palestinians were killed in all, 6 of them Hamas members. One Israeli senior commander was killed. In the aftermath, a former Israeli commander, Maj. Gen. Tal Rousso, sought to tone down the notion that this was a deliberate assassination attempt against the Hamas battalion commander Nour Baraka, saying:

These are operations that take place all the time, every night, in all divisions. This is an operation that was probably uncovered.

See, this is the expert. Every night, in all divisions.

Incitement against Palestinian citizens

But “Fauda” is problematic in other ways. The big problem is mostly how it portrays Palestinians. George Zeidan in Haaretz:

But for me, one of the worst, even dangerous, scenes occurs towards the end of the third season, when an Arab physiotherapist, as he’s starting a therapy session in an Israeli hospital, attempts to kill the head of a Shin Bet branch in the West Bank. It’s worth deconstructing this plot: 17 percent of Israel’s physicians, 24 percent of its nurses and 47 percent of its pharmacists are Arabs. There has never been a single incident in history where Arab medics in Israel have betrayed their Hippocratic oath and harmed a patient. It is beyond ridiculous to platform a character and plotline that marks Arabs working inside the Israeli health care system as untrustworthy and disloyal, and capable of violent attacks. It can only create further mistrust between people. To promote such an image is completely deceitful and false – and worse, it feeds those voices, including at the top of Israel’s government, who constantly demean Israel’s Arab citizens, legislate their inequality and incite against them.

So, “Fauda” is simply a perfidious series. It should just be avoided. I cannot say whether the ICRC sidestepped their official authority in commenting on a series that is nominally fiction. In any case, the responses that they got show that they hit a nerve of Israeli nationalist militant pride, the pride of perfidy.

H/t Ofer Neiman