Skip to main content


Perhaps, by being in Gaza, Idan Amedi had hoped to make an even bigger name for himself. A few videos and images from the frontline could make a world of difference for an actor, whose name is affiliated with the television series Fauda.

Fauda is an Arabic word, meaning ‘chaos’. The Netflix show is centered around an Israeli army undercover unit hunting down supposed Palestinian ‘terrorists’ in the West Bank.

Amedi, however, did not take into account several important points: Gaza is a whole different business, his own colleague, Matan Meir, was killed by the Resistance in Gaza in November, and more importantly, reality is different from fiction.

So different that on Monday, Israeli media reported that Stav Basha, an Israeli army commander, had died from a heart attack in Gaza because of what he had seen there.

The reference to what Basha had experienced does not refer to the genocide against the Palestinian civilians, which has resulted, so far, in the killing and wounding of nearly 100,000 people. Rather, it refers to the punishment, received by Israeli soldiers, as meted out by the Palestinian Resistance.

Back to Amedi. The 35-year-old actor was, according to Israeli official sources, injured when a military truck, filled with explosives, blew up in the Bureij area, in central Gaza.

According to Israeli accounts, the munition was supposed to be used to blow up an entrance to a Resistance tunnel. Instead, the vehicle, its cargo of munition and officers, were blown up by a shell fired from another Israeli tank.

This is certainly not the kind of ‘Fauda’ Amedi was hoping to experience. In this case, it is Israelis creating their own chaos in Gaza, without any Palestinian intervention.

Since the Palestinian Resistance does not use large vehicles to transport its fighters around the Gaza Strip, it remains unclear why Israelis keep firing at one another.

Israeli military sources have estimated earlier that nearly 25 percent of all Israeli military casualties in the Gaza war are a result of ‘friendly’ fire.

The show Fauda does not exist to convey any degree of reality in the West Bank or even Gaza.

It was described by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in a statement in March 2018, as “an anti-Arab, racist, Israeli propaganda tool that glorifies the Israeli military’s war crimes against the Palestinian people.”

The show, also according to BDS, helped ‘sanitize’ and ‘normalize’ the crimes of the Israeli occupation, and is “directly complicit in promoting and justifying these grave human rights violations.”

But it seems that the Israeli entertainment industry, which has massive sway, not only in the US but throughout the world as well, has made the mistake of believing its own propaganda, or rather hasbara.

For those who do not know, al-Bureij refugee camp is a tiny space of about 2 sq kilometers, overcrowded with refugees, whose families had been ethnically cleansed from historic Palestine when the state of Israel was established upon the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948.

Whether Amedi knew such a fact or not, it matters little. And whether the official Israeli account on how Amedi was seriously wounded, along with 39 Israeli soldiers – who were killed and wounded – also matters little.

What does matter, however, is that Bureij is literally hundreds of meters away from Israel’s eastern border. And that Ademi’s heroics, and those of thousands like him, were not enough to secure his military adventure in Gaza.

If there is any true Fauda in the West Bank and Gaza, it is one created by the Israelis themselves. Obviously, this chaos will only end when Israel learns to respect the rights of the Palestinian people, their sovereignty, and their history.

The New York Times, among others, suggests that Anemi, though badly injured, is likely to pull through. One wonders if the Israeli actor will realize that propaganda does not pay off, and that the Resistance of a small refugee camp like Bureij influences reality and moves history beyond Netflix and its high-rated fantasies.

Israeli actor and reservist soldier Idan Amed with Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi in Gaza. (Photo. Video grab)

Source: The Palestine Chronicle

Leave a Reply