Netflix and Telltale partner on Minecraft TV show, Stranger Things game
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-06-14-netflix-and-telltale-partner-on-minecraft-tv-show-stranger
Minecraft: Story Mode will be an interactive five-episode series, but Netflix doesn’t have “any plans to get into gaming”
The best 19 proven steps how to get a job
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-best-19-proven-steps-how-to-get-a-job-ff1c23eaa515?source=rss----3a8
how to get a tech job in 19 proven stepsBe ready to climb your next mountainTL;DR; Find the job, get obsessed, get an offer, begin the journey.Before you consider a job in any company, big or small, you need to make clear for yourself what you really want in your personal and professional life. Understand what you are valuing and what expectations you’ve got from your future employee. I need to be true to yourself on why you are changing the job and why not to try and improve the existing one. Please have all “Whys” answered.It may be even one of those prominent ones like Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook or Microsoft (including GitHub and LinkedIn). It does not really matter for me. The only assumptions I am making are that it is extremely hard to get into a company and the bar is pretty (...)
#job-hunting #programming #interview #how-to-get-a-tech-job #careers
Microservices for Startups: An Interview with Isaac Mosquera of Armory
▻https://hackernoon.com/microservices-for-startups-an-interview-with-isaac-mosquera-of-armory-ee
This interview was done for our Microservices for Startups ebook. Be sure to check it out for practical advice on microservices. Thanks to Isaac for his time and input!Isaac Mosquera is the CTO at Armory, which helps software teams ship better software, faster.For context, how big is your engineering team? Are you using microservices and can you provide a general overview of how you’re using them?Our current team is quite small — only 5 engineers — but we work on an open source deployment tool called Spinnaker that was open sourced by Netflix in 2015. Netflix uses it to deploy over 2,000 microservices roughly 4,000 times a day. We help enterprise customers achieve that velocity with microservices and Spinnaker.We see deployments as a critical component to obtaining the value of microservices. (...)
Embracing the Differences : Inside the Netflix API Redesign
▻https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/embracing-the-differences-inside-the-netflix-api-redesign-15fd8b3dc49d
“Netflix has found substantial limitations in the traditional one-size-fits-all (OSFA) REST API approach. As a result, we have moved to a new, fully customizable API.”
The Microservice Weekly #134 — May 30, 2018
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-microservice-weekly-134-may-30-2018-2d160f4e0a33?source=rss----3a814
Failure resilient model using circuit breakers for MicroservicesVia: KUNAL GROVERHow to design your #microservices architecture if you want to make sure our application is working flawlessly?Training: Designing Microservice Architectures — BerlinVia: RISINGSTACKWe are going to host a training called Designing Microservice Architectures in Berlin, on June 14th-15th. If you’d like to learn how to break down a monolith into microservices properly, join us!Simplified Microservices building with Spring Cloud, Netflix OSS(Eureka, Zuul, Hystrix, Ribbon), DockersVia: MADHU PATHYThis article guides you through how to split up applications as separate services for each core and API service functionality, that should be deployed independently on the Cloud.How to architect an application with microservices (...)
#spotify, #soundcloud, and the Race Up the Value Chain
▻https://hackernoon.com/spotify-soundcloud-and-the-race-up-the-value-chain-ca62c9c85d2?source=rs
It’s no secret that the #music industry is a tough nut to crack. Spotify, Soundcloud, and a host of other music industry startups all struggle to reach profitability despite their vast consumer networks. Spotify has a staggering 70 million subscribers to its service, and yet it still has a cost of revenue of 79%. For every dollar of revenue it makes on its subscription fees, it has to pay 79% of that to record labels (and other assorted costs). This is in large part due to the price setting power of music suppliers. Compared to other aggregators Spotify has to pay far more for its content and has much less negotiating power. Netflix is at a cost of revenue of only ~66% and Zillow has been able to strong-arm its suppliers (Multiple Listing Services) into submission because of their (...)
Nintendo still won’t commit to online services
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-05-11-nintendo-still-wont-commit-to-online-services
“Netflix for retro games” would be a huge selling point for the Switch - but Nintendo’s reticence to commit to online services will stop it happening
Announcing IoT Inspector: Studying Smart Home IoT Device Behavior
▻https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/04/23/announcing-iot-inspector-a-tool-to-study-smart-home-iot-device-be
Finding #3: Many IoT Devices Contact a Large and Diverse Set of Third Parties
(...)We have found that many IoT devices communicate with third-party services, of which consumers are typically unaware. (...)
Samsung Smart TV. During the first minute after power-on, the TV talks to Google Play, Double Click, #Netflix, #FandangoNOW, #Spotify, #CBS, #MSNBC, #NFL, #Deezer, and #Facebook — even though we did not sign in or create accounts with any of them.
Can #blockchain technology and #transcodium revolutionize the #transcoding market?
▻https://hackernoon.com/can-blockchain-technology-and-transcodium-revolutionize-the-transcoding-
Here is a question for you, how much time you spend watching videos? Recall everything, Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram.. A LOT, right?Have you ever thought how these companies are able to deliver you a smooth streaming experience on every device you have? Well, It’s because of they detect the device and internet speed and delivers you the right file.Transcoding is the process of converting from one file format to another desirable and compatible format. Before your favourite social media platform or streaming site such as YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter makes a video available to you, they need to convert this video into multiple formats in order to support different devices such as smartphones, laptop and desktop computers, TVs and more, since each of them have (...)
Eliot Borenstein, Author at NYU Jordan Center
▻http://jordanrussiacenter.org/author/eliot
Eliot Borenstein is a Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies and Collegiate Professer at New York University. Educated at Oberlin College (B.A., 1988) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (M.A., 1989, Ph.D., 1993), Mr. Borenstein was an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia (1993-95) before taking an appointment at NYU in 1995.
...
Articles by Eliot Borenstein
The Americans: “Take Your Daughter to Work” Day
Previously, on the Walking Dead…
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The Americans: The Marriage Plot against America
Even if our heroes survive the season, their future looks bleak.
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Was Putin targeting Jews?
Semantics, not anti-Semitism, may be behind Putin’s gaffe.
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Boys Just Want to Have Fun: Just How Queer are the “Satisfaction” Videos?
The Satisfaction supporters are definitely fighting for something, but it is not LGBT rights
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Enabling Russian Paranoia: A Response to Thomas Weber
We may not be colluding with Russia, but we are handing over propaganda victories free of charge
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Matt Taibbi’s Not-So-Secret Russian Past
Like the clueless expats they loathed, the editors treated Moscow and its residents as their playground.
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Ksenia Sobchak; or, Who Gets to Lose to Putin in 2018?
Russia could do a lot worse than Ksenia Sobchak. In fact, most countries currently are (not everyone gets to be Canada).
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Is “fake news” fake news?
We are in a panic about the very means that are used to spread panic.
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Blaming Russia
Blaming Russia lets us off the hook.
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Change is coming to All The Russias
I am stepping away from most of my editorial duties for the blog
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Talking with Geoff Cebula, Author of “Adjunct”
I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want her to be a Slavist.
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Cringe-Watching: Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews
Watching Stone question Putin and, worse, try to make small-talk, is simply embarrassing.
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The Ballad of Sonya and Louie: An Immigrant Story
I had thought my family was Russian, but then when I went to college, I found out we were just Jews.
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Hulk Smash Stupid Russia Theories
Monocausal explanations have the virtue of catchiness and the vice of absurdity.
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In Defense of Russia’s Holocaust on Ice
Has “Springtime for Hitler” finally met its match?
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American Fascism: Lessons from Russia
Putin is not a fascist, in part because he does not need to be. Trump ran a consistently fascist campaign.
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Russia vs. PornHub: Lie Back and Think of the Motherland
Apparently, people would rather do anything else—watch porn, have gay sex—than engage in heterosexual intercourse.
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PokéMaidan, or, How to Start a Moral Panic in Russia
Pokémon Go troubles the Russian media imagination because it represents the return of the repressed.
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Is Donald Trump carrying Putin’s baby?
The real problem with the constant Trump/Putin comparisons is that they are profoundly unfair… to Putin.
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No Netflix, No Chill: Russia’s Culture Minister Would Rather Purge than Binge
In the West, we’ve long been familiar with the clear and present danger of Netflix.
How the use of #blockchain can improve the quality of the #internet?
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-the-use-of-blockchain-can-improve-the-quality-of-the-internet-a71a6d
Most of us consider the Internet as one of the daily commodities we cannot imagine life without. In recent years, scrolling the channels of social media, using various search engines or news websites for collecting all necessary information, binge-watching favourite TV programmes on Netflix have already become things, which are perceived similarly as brushing teeth or drinking coffee in the morning. Our lives have become digitalized to an enormously large extent, and it is definitely an amazing development. However, the ongoing Internet revolution is not entirely bright, as some enthusiasts may try to claim. The global Internet structure is currently affected by a number of significant flaws which are already serious obstacles in terms of the further development of this phenomenon.The (...)
All Your Data Are Belong to Us - Shelly Palmer
▻https://www.shellypalmer.com/2018/04/data-belong-us
Dans le contexte du capitalisme moderne la protection des données personnelles est un contresens. C’est un de ses défenseurs les plus intelligents qui le dit. Il y voit un problème et appelle ses lecteurs à proposer une solution. En principe cette solution se prononce dans un seul mot : socialisme !
Malheureusement ce problème ne se resoud pas par des dicussions entre programmeurs solidaires, mais elle se débat entre les grandes puissances mondiales à coups de canons et de rockets.
Apple is a hardware company. It sells the most expensive computers and consumer electronics hardware you can buy. Because of its extreme pricing, Apple enjoys extreme profit margins. This is how it has amassed over $235 billion of cash on its balance sheet. Apple uses data to its benefit, and it has absolutely no need to make its data available to anyone for any reason. Apple makes more than enough money selling hardware. Apple also sells software and content. Both are profitable businesses. Apple doesn’t need to share any of that data with anyone either.
On the other hand, Facebook does not sell hardware or software or content. It sells you. In order to do this, it provides you with all kinds of services you find valuable. When you agree to use Facebook, you are exchanging data that describes how you use Facebook’s platform and the related services (sometimes provided by third parties) for the right to use the services. Facebook has privacy policies. You may or may not like them, but they are articulated in the privacy section of Facebook’s interface and you can set them as you see fit.
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What Would Change?
Everything! If the government regulates Facebook, the regulations will apply to every data-collecting entity that does business in the United States. With over 2 billion registered users, Facebook would own the largest data set reflecting user aspiration. Aspiration is a valuable currency that can be transformed into cash. Advertisers want to know what you aspire to, and you give that information to Facebook with every item (bit of data) you post, what you click on, read and consume on the platform.
Google would own the largest data set reflecting user intention. You don’t intend to go to Google; you go to Google and tell it what you intend to do. Google has transformed the currency of intention into over $100 billion of annual revenue.
To round out FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google), Netflix would own the largest data set reflecting user passions, and Amazon would own the largest data set reflecting user consumption.
Tight regulation restricting the sharing of data outside these companies would create government-granted data monopolies on the four biggest data-driven currencies: aspiration, intention, passion, and consumption. Advertisers, sponsors, and content providers would have zero bargaining power against these data sets. Regulation would kick traditional media while it is down and would empower giant tech companies to rule the world.
It Gets Worse
Without the ability to leverage the data collected by large platforms, start-ups would need funding to purchase access. Maybe that’s a good thing. There’s lots of capital sitting on the sidelines, and perhaps the venture capitalists would enjoy a U-turn back to the days when start-ups actually needed money to start up.
No matter how you look at this, the consequence of overzealous regulation will be the creation of a handful of de facto dataopolies.
#vie_privée #monopoles #capitalisme #platform_capitalism #socialisme
The Self Is Other People - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/the-self-is-other-people
“We’re constantly bouncing off other people and looking at other people as a mirror of us. Our very sense of who we are is intertwined with what we see when we see other people look at us.”Photograph by Saly Noémi / Fortepan / WikicommonsAn oft-repeated line in A Series of Unfortunate Events, a Netflix TV show recently adapted from a book series, feels apt for the moment. “In a world too often governed by corruption and arrogance,” it goes, “it can be difficult to stay true to one’s philosophical and literary principles.” The story, by Lemony Snicket, follows the Baudelaire orphans—Violet (14 years old, when the series begins), Klaus (12), and Sunny (a baby)—who are shuttled from guardian to guardian, each one as incompetent as the next, as they’re chased by Count Olaf, a distant relative of (...)
Five Women
▻https://www.thisamericanlife.org/640/five-women
A different kind of #MeToo story, about several women who worked for the same man. They tell us not only about their troubling encounters with him, but also about their lives beforehand. Who were they when they entered the workplace, and how did their personal histories shape the way they dealt with his harassment?
Chana Joffe-Walt, the author, was interviewed on the longform podcast last week: ▻https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-285-chana-joffe-walt
I felt like there was more to learn from these stories, more than just which men are bad and shouldn’t have the Netflix special that they wanted to have. And I was interested, also, in that there were groups of women, and that somehow, in having a group of women, you would have variation of experience. There could be a unifying person who they all experienced, but they would inevitably experience that person differently. And that would raise the question of: Why? And I feel like there is this response: ‘Why did she stay?’ Or: ‘Why didn’t she say fuck you?’ Or: ‘I wouldn’t have been upset by that. I wouldn’t have been offended by that thing.’ Which I feel like is a natural response, but also has a lack of curiosity. There are actual answers to those questions that are interesting.
Liliana Segura, another former alternet reporter was recently on longform and talked about her time there as well:
▻https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-280-liliana-segura
USA - Obama verhandelt mit Netflix über eigene Show
▻https://diasp.eu/p/6842048
USA - Obama verhandelt mit Netflix über eigene Show
Ex-Präsident will nicht direkt auf Politik Trumps reagieren
▻https://derstandard.at/2000075750581/Obama-verhandelt-mit-Netflix-ueber-eigene-Show?ref=rss #News
Subscription-based #Virtual_Reality platform Terra Virtua launching this September
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-09-subscription-based-virtual-reality-platform-terra-virtua-l
Industry veterans team up to create blockchain-powered ’Netflix for VR’, cryptocurrency token sale to follow
danah boyd: How Critical Thinking and Media Literacy Efforts Are ‘Backfiring’ Today | EdSurge News
▻https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-07-danah-boyd-how-critical-thinking-and-media-literacy-efforts-are-
Keynote par danah boyd à SXSW 2018
Few would challenge the value of helping students develop critical thinking and information literacy. But if such skills are encouraged simply as a reactionary means to challenge knowledge, says danah boyd, the future may look even more chaotic and grim.
Speaking at the morning keynote on the third day of SXSW EDU, boyd, a researcher at Microsoft and the founder and president of Data & Society, offered this provocative observation: “Many of the forms of critical thinking that we’ve introduced into American education are backfiring right now.”
Touching on matters ranging from Russian propaganda efforts to Netflix, history to philosophy, boyd’s intellectually provocative talk raised plenty of deep questions around media and manipulation. But she also admitted there are few clear solutions.
Educational groups, from Common Sense Media to PBS, have introduced online curricula designed to help teachers teach the topic. Often these tools include lessons on checking facts and analyzing sources for biases.
Yet these exercises, while valuable, can perpetuate an even bigger problem if framed in the wrong context. “Right now, the conversation around fact checking has devolved to suggest that there is only one truth. We have to recognize that there are plenty of students who are taught that there is only one legitimate way of thinking, one accepted worldview,” boyd said.
“Funders, journalists, social media companies and elected officials all say they want a ‘media literacy solution.’ I don’t know what it is, [but] I hope it’s not a version that’s just CNN versus Fox News,” she added.
By describing the goal of media literacy as a way to discover the truth, adults may actually reinforce the message that there is only one explanation, a strict, black-and-white line between what’s right and wrong. That thinking generally does not sit well for adolescents and young adults, who may be naturally inclined to challenge authority and seek alternative explanations, said boyd.
“Many people especially young people turn to online communities to make sense of the world around them. They want to ask uncomfortable questions, interrogate assumptions and poke holes at things they’ve learned,” she said. “But there are some questions that we’ve told them are unacceptable to ask in public.” In response, they’ve taken to online forums, some of which “have popped up to encourage people to go down certain paths of thinking—some of them being deeply extreme” in their views.
Policing a City in Crisis.
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/03/05/policing-a-city-in-crisis
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYGyUsmmDbg
How does a police department respond to a city in crisis? In 2014, Flint, Michigan switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River in a bid to save money, but toxic levels of lead leached into the city’s tap water. A year later, the city elected a new mayor who in turn hired a new police chief. Tim Johnson arrived at the job facing a funding and personnel shortage in a city that is the ninth most violent in America. Under these conditions, Jessica Dimmock, Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper began filming the city’s police department for “Flint Town,” a new eight-episode series on Netflix. The show provides a rare insight into a how lack of resources puts a further strain on the already tense relationship between the police department and the community it serves.Over 20 months, Canepari, Cooper and Dimmock documented the struggles of the department and its officers against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential election and a series of police-involved shootings that rocked the country.
A l’origine de la série, le #webdoc ▻http://flintisaplace.com
Flint Town: Netflix docu-series shines light on the harsh reality of US policing | Television & radio | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/mar/03/flint-town-netflix-docu-series-shines-light-on-the-harsh-reality-of-us-
Episodes are stacked with local and personal dramas tied to the series’ main characters – about a dozen police officers in Flint’s understaffed and underfunded force. Given the renewed scrutiny placed on police since demonstrators in Ferguson took to the streets to protest against police violence in August 2014, these armed officers are an unlikely vehicle for showcasing systemic issues.
“It was our intention to do something that added additional layers to that,” said series co-director Jessica Dimmock. “It felt important to us that we go home with officers, we learn about their personal lives or personal struggles, we understand the emotional toll when someone’s mother dies or they are having relationship troubles. But also show that policing doesn’t exist in a bubble in this city.”
The episode where Watson arrests his longtime pal’s son is loosely focused on the uptick in crime at Halloween, but also features Donald Trump’s visit to Flint while running for president.
Oh, un stand-up libanais sur Netflix, en arabe dis-donc, et enregistré au Casino du Liban. Choueeeeeette !
Bon, au bout de 10 minutes, le type en est encore à sa première blague, sur la façon de se faire la bise au Liban, et je suis déjà à me demander comment Netflix est parvenu à dénicher le seul comique pas drôle du Liban.
Pour rappel, le type le plus drôle du Liban (selon des gens qui savent mieux que moi), c’est aussi l’un de ses meilleurs musiciens… Alors hop :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3nWx0KQv3w
Angry Arab l’a vu aussi: Shame on Netflix for promoting a racist, homophobic, sexist, and disgusting Lebanese comedians
▻http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2018/03/shame-on-netflix-for-promoting-racist.html
Of all the Arab comedians (especially Egyptian and Syrians who are the funniest Arabs), Netflix chose the Lebanese comedian, Adel Karam. His show is most disgusting and full of blatantly racist, sexist, and homophobic humor. Forget about all that: it is most unfunny and Michele observed while I was watching it that nobody in the audience was laughing. He made jokes about African men having big penises and African women having big butts and breasts. There should be a petition by Arabs to remove this choice by Netflix. Arab comedy is so much better than this trash.
PS This guy Karam is the same star of the lousy racist Lebanese movie which won academy award nomination.
What Does David Attenborough Really Think of Darwin? - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/what-does-david-attenborough-really-think-of-darwin
A casual viewer of nature documentaries—or anyone who hasn’t heard of or seen the film Attenborough wrote called, “Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life”—might surmise that the man was hired to narrate the scripts merely because he’s got a great voice.Photograph courtesy Johann Edwin Heupel / FlickrThe name “David Attenborough” has, to me, always been an enchanting but disembodied voice narrating the hidden struggles and splendors of the natural world. In the last few months I’ve seen several of his documentaries (out of the 23 I could count on Netflix) from start to finish—Life, Africa, and Planet Earth. They’re mesmerizing, and some segments can be heart-racing, some distressing, and some morally confusing, as you feel your sympathies tugged in opposite directions (quite often, the offspring of (...)
Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution (2018) Watch on Netflix
▻https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/liberated-the-new-sexual-revolution-2018
Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution is a documentary about coming of age in today’s young adult hookup culture. Following the journey of college students on Spring Break, the film provides...
Why doesn’t Netflix’s Castlevania suck?
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-26-why-doesnt-netflixs-castlevania-suck
Adi Shankar’s approach for adapting beloved properties into acclaimed films and TV starts with fandom
Do we even need a Netflix for games?
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-18-do-we-even-need-a-netflix-for-games
All forms of entertainment have perfected the on-demand model - except video games. We speak to the firms striving to rectify this
At least let us hate ’Fauda’ -
In the Israeli TV series there are no rulers or ruled, no occupation, no historical background, no checkpoints, no poverty, no home demolitions, no expulsions, settlers or violent soldiers
Sayed Kashua Jan 12, 2018
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.834416
This is neither a television review nor an attempt to criticize the morality of the television series “Fauda” and the feeling of superiority that accompanies every Israeli producer who is convinced that he can speak in the name of Arabs as easily as he can impersonate an Arab by wearing cheap clothes, growing a beard and dyeing it black. In general, Israeli movies and television, whether highbrow or for the masses, have always served the ruling Israeli discourse.
With few exceptions (mainly documentaries), the greatest protests of the creative culture have been those with the theme of “shooting and crying,” with the main concern being Jewish ethics. Since the second intifada, the motif of “there is no one to talk to” on the other side, championed by Ehud Barak, has dominated the treatment in Israeli culture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (always “conflict,” never “occupation”).
Thus if in the wake of the first Lebanon war, the main theme of political statements in Israeli art was that there are partners on the Palestinian side but negotiations will always fail on account of extremists from both sides (what could we do, Likud was in power), since October 2000 the main theme has been that there are no partners, they’re all extremists. (What could we do, Labor was in power.)
>> New season of hit series Fauda sets out to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict real <<
So there’s no point in a political critique of “Fauda.” First, its political statement is not unique, and it is not so different from the landscape of “Bethlehem,” “The Bubble” and “For My Father” (“Sof Shavua B’Tel Aviv) nor is it different from the tenor of Israel’s main nightly news programs. Second, there is no point in criticizing the culture and the representation of “the conflict” by Israeli creative artists in the current political atmosphere. The arrogance and the assumption of ownership over the Palestinian story are the necessary consequence of military rule of Palestinian lives. Like the soldiers, many Israeli creative artists not respect borders. Some people expropriate land, others expropriate a story.
Still, I write about “Fauda” because of the many statements, writings and quotes that have become a kind of received wisdom in Israel, according to which Arabs, Hamas members, senior Palestinian Authority officials or “the other side,” as one newspaper put it, “are convinced that the series serves them.”
A still from the second season of “Fauda.”Ronen Akerman/YES
You already have military victories and cultural control in marketing the Israeli occupation policy: At least give the Palestinians the option of hating “Fauda.” Are Netflix, worldwide success, economic growth and serving Israeli PR not enough for them?
Do the creators of “Fauda” really need to market their show as a balanced series that shows the reality in the territories? And if it is being sold as such to the world, is it so important to them for the Palestinians to admit that it’s high art that helps Palestinians interpret correctly the reality in which they live?
How dumb do the creators of “Fauda” and the Israeli critics who adopted the line that the Arabs are crazy about “Fauda” think Arabs are?
The Israeli sits in front of the screen and sees, in the second season’s opening scene, a bloodthirsty, bearded Arab who sends his friend to a bus station that is filled mainly with women and young soldiers. And when the “terrorist” has regrets and seeks to return to the car without planting the bomb in the bus station, Nidal “El Makdessi” — the main Palestinian character — pushes a button to detonate the bomb, killing his friend in cold blood as long as he can take a few Jews with him.
What the hell does the Israeli critic think the Palestinian viewer sitting in front of the screen feels? What? Does he shout “Allahu Akbar” at the explosion and think that El Makdessi, who came from Syria and was trained by the Islamic State organization, is a cool guy, and sometimes you have no choice but to betray your friend as long as you kill Jews, no matter whether they are civilians, children or soldiers?
What does the Hamas militant (according to “Fauda” co-creator Avi Issacharoff, the group put a link to the series on its home page) think at that moment? He’s thinking: “Wow, I’ve got to see this El Makdessi. First of all, he has a cool name, both frightening and charming, and we’ve got to watch this series, because in Hollywood, the good guys always win.”
A still from the second season of “Fauda.”Ronen Akerman/YES
Is it possible the Israeli creators think Arabs are so stupid they consider El Makdessi a “good guy” in the series, which is based entirely on good guys versus bad guys? Or perhaps Hamas members will be so happy about the fact that their people, as they are presented in their beloved Israeli program, love their mother? Okay, so they murder Arabs sometimes because there is no choice, sending a friend with a bomb or a rocket propelled grenade into a café in Nablus, who wipes out some Arabs playing cards.
The Israelis in “Fauda,” by the way, are very sensitive to human life. “There are too many noncombatants,” says an Israeli officer in fatigues, when someone even dares raise the idea of taking out El Makdessi with a drone. “Let’s wait until he reaches an open space,” orders the Israeli commander, who cares so much for Palestinian lives that he endangers his dedicated soldiers.
“It’s clearly an Israeli and not a Palestinian narrative,” the series’ creators said in one interview, again using the deceptive word “narrative,” which on one hand turns baseless lies in an action series into a legitimate narrative of moral superiority that Israelis tell about themselves, and on the other hand the narrative — the “N-word” — reduces the lives of Palestinians under the shadow of military oppression into another story that they tell themselves, as if they live in an Israeli prime-time series.
Rona-Lee Shim’on in “Fauda.” Ronen Akerman/YES
So, no: Arabs, Palestinians, Hamas members — those from the other side — do not love “Fauda,” and to be honest I’m not sure how many of them even watch it or have heard of it. And no, there is nothing in “Fauda” that addresses the reality in the territories. In “Fauda,” there are no rulers or ruled, no occupation, no historical background, no checkpoints, poverty, home demolitions, expulsions, settlers or violent soldiers. Nor are there courts that jail politicians without a trial and pass judgment on children and teens who are trying to push away armed soldiers.
According to “Fauda,” the Palestinians are driven by a longing for vengeance, a strong Arab urge that explains the murderousness of the main characters. It is personal revenge and nothing more. Indeed, the Palestinians have no other reason to rise up against the Israelis. To be honest, their lives as reflected in the series are pretty good.
So what in the hell is the Israeli critic, creative artist or newspaper reader thinking when he asserts that Arabs love “Fauda”? Is there a way to explain this claim without assuming total Arab stupidity? Or perhaps a Palestinian family is sitting somewhere in a refugee camp in Jenin, declaring: “Gentlemen, this is art for art’s sake. Forget about Israelis and Palestinians. Let’s encourage Doron [Kavillio, the lead Israeli character, played by Lior Raz] and the guys disguised as Arabs because after all they’re really cute, brave and look out for their country and their people.”
And Doron, what a soul he has, so concerned for his children in the first episode, they sleep like two angels in his embrace while he thinks about the danger that lurks for them from El Makdessi. “If he got to my father, he’ll get to my children, too,” he tells the commander of the elite unit, because that’s how it is. The Palestinians are the ones who know how to get to the children of armed Israelis.
If the Palestinian is already watching “Fauda,” his main thought will be: How is it that the people of Nablus don’t identify the Israeli-accented Arabic of the soldiers dressed as Arabs the moment they open their mouths? And really, how can El Makdessi be on a motorcycle in Nablus one time and on a motorcycle somewhere in the Negev another? If such mobility were possible, half of our troubles would be behind us. And perhaps he’ll wonder, where are the actors from? Where did they film? Why the hell does no soldier disguised as an Arab dress up as an educated Arab?
The Arab viewer hopes the international viewer is not dumb enough to attribute any credibility to a commercial series, and wonders if anyone in Israel really thinks this series is leftist because the murderers hug their siblings from time to time. If so, then there really isn’t anyone to talk with over there.
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, center, flanked by “Fauda” co-creators Lior Raz, left, and Avi Issacharoff. Rafi Delouya
Sayed Kashua
Haaretz Contributor