From Fauda to Facebook: Exploring Palestinian Censorship and Bias in the Media

Introduction

With the release of season 4 of Netflix’s Fauda this month, the treatment and portrayal of Palestinians by the Western media and Israel is immediately brought back into the forefront. It’s not just Fauda, which is an Israeli TV show, that fails to portray the Palestinian struggle in a fair way; there’s also a constant display of pro-Palestinian media censorship, primarily on Twitter and Facebook throughout the last few years. This brief essay will explore the media censorship that plagues Palestinian activism and look at the way Palestine is portrayed in the TV show Fauda. Lastly, the paper will look at the Israeli response to movies such as Netflix’s Farha, which followed a little girl during the Nakba.

Media Censorship of the Palestinian Cause

New debates have arisen in recent times on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to political activism and what content is allowed on these platforms. An issue, however, has been the rise of pro-Palestinian tweets/posts being censured by these platforms, as they are dominated by the Western media and their close allyship to Israel. This was particularly evident following the attacks in May of 2021 between Israel and Palestinian groups in Gaza, including Hamas. An independent study and investigation on Facebook commissioned by Meta themselves was carried out by the Business for Social Responsibility, a sustainable business network and consultancy, and found that the company severely hindered and limited the ability for Palestinians to express their opinion and solidarity throughout the conflict, failing to adhere to their right of freedom of expression. Moreso, the report found that the platform censored the hashtag #AlAqsa which was related to the raid by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on the East Jerusalem mosque.

This unfortunately is not a one-off occasion for Facebook. According to 7amleh, a Palestinian open-source platform that monitors digital rights violations, from January 2021 through December 2022, there had been a total suspension of 1,269 accounts being taken down, with the majority coming on Facebook. One of these suspensions was for Said Arikat, the Washington Bureau Chief for Al-Quds, who was banned from Twitter in December of 2022, before being reinstated a few days later.

Fauda

Fauda, an Israeli-created and globally popular Netflix series, follows a Mista’arvim (Arabic:مستعربين or Musta’ribin) unit and their operations in the West Bank and Gaza and rooting out ones they view as terrorists or threats to Israel. This unit’s ability to speak Arabic allows them to blend in as ordinary Palestinian civilians in order to carry out operations. With the new release of Season 4 of Fauda, it is back on the charts with millions of people across the world watching it, which raises the issue that millions of people in the world may be watching the show with a lack of understanding and empathy for the Palestinian people and may associate the Palestinians in the show as terrorists, due to the common stereotype of Westerners associating Arabs with terrorism.

The biggest issue with a show such as Fauda is that though they can say they are neutral on a conflict, they are inherently biased towards Israel. The main actor on the show, Itzik Cohen, said in an interview that “[Fauda] does us a very good service in the world because it presents the issues we face, shows what environment we live in and in what reality. In my opinion, this is the best propaganda broadcast for the State of Israel.” This sentiment is highly concerning, as it is one of the largest international Israeli shows of all time and can create a profound disregard to the Palestinian struggle and civil society.

Farha and Israeli Criticism

Farha, a Palestinian film recently released on Netflix, depicts the story of a girl who just wants an education, until her and her family’s life is upended following the invasion of Zionist forces in their town in 1948 and the family is forced to abandon her. The film received positive recognition from numerous outlets, such as the Washington Post, and The New York Times. Additionally, Farha won best youth feature film at the 2022 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. 

However, that didn’t stop Israel from criticizing and protesting the film, and saying it created a “false narrative” of the Nakba and the events portrayed in the movie. Moreso, outrage and protests against the film were carried out in Israel, including Israeli politician and former Finance Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who took to Twitter to express how he felt about the film. Lieberman said, “it’s crazy that Netflix has chosen to release a film whose whole purpose is to create false representations that incite against IDF soldiers.” Lieberman’s denial of the events of 1948 is just another example of the uphill battle the Palestinian struggle faces when it comes to positive portrayal in the media.

Concluding Thoughts

The Palestinian resistance and struggle have been silenced by the Western world ever since 1948, and while movies such as Farha becoming mainstream and receiving a relatively warm reception is a step in the right direction, it is not nearly enough. One of the biggest culprits of the silence is the lack of coverage of the media on a daily basis documenting what Palestinians experience. While the media has done a comparatively good job covering the murders that took place in Jenin last weekend, the media tends to only pay attention to the issue when something drastic happens. Steady reporting and documentation of the Palestinian struggle would go a long way in having the media bias slowly recede, but until then, Palestinians will continue to face an uphill battle on social media platforms and face a lack of exposure in film and TV.  

This article was written by Alec Bogash, an intern at The Jerusalem Fund. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.