Netflix's new series is based on lies that mark Israelis and the IDF as violent and evil • This is how viewers laugh • Opinion
A shallow version of reality. "The Miracle Man"
Want a stormy series? To talk about you on social networks? Get a winning recipe: Mix up some Israeli-Palestinian conflict, spread some allegations of IDF violence against helpless refugees, and put in the oven. In three to four minutes you will receive a winning product. So what if this is pure false pro-Palestinian propaganda. It came to me after watching the first two episodes of Netflix's new series "The Miracles." Caution, spoilers.
The series describes how a mysterious "Messiah" man arrives in Damascus and rescues the besieged Syrians from their narrow ISIS, and then leads about 2,000 refugees toward the "Promised Land" - Israel. He leads them like Moshe Rabbeinu toward the State of Israel, in a kind of endless wilderness, but then, at the border, he encounters the forces of evil - a soldier and a soldier who sit in a position and fight them, by shooting in the air.
For days, and at least until the third episode, poor refugees, "Syrians-Palestinians" as defined by the filmmakers, sit without food and drink and wait. Meanwhile, we are told that Israel refuses to help the poor refugees, a move that has been widely criticized in the world. Thus, without entering into a debate about the right of return, without any explanation of the complexity and potential risk of bringing thousands of refugees into Israel, a real Pandora's box, Israelis are marked as evil. Those who face the huge difficulty of the Syrians. A good neighborly project? Backstage Assistance? We are the villains who ignore refugees.
Moving on. Later we will see the mysterious Messiah coming to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Because he escaped the ISA in a mysterious way, Border Fighters who are on the scene identify him and storm him while carrying a message of peace and unity. A shot is heard, a fallen child is injured and those in attendance start shouting at the fighters "go here" and "this is our country". More in the Palestinian narrative, another Ix for Israel. Now, not only are we disappointed with refugees, we are also randomly shooting children. Admittedly, it was not the soldiers who shot the child but a divine act, but the damage to Israel was already done. A new intifada has erupted, we are to blame.
Are the creators prevented from hating Israel? To me the answer is negative. They are much more banal sinners - wanting to earn some more public interest through the use of regional conflicts. The problem is that viewers are not so sophisticated. Using explosive issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the right of entry of refugees from the war in Syria to Israel is a wonderful way to generate interest, but most of the time there is no room to go into these issues. Viewers get a shallow version of reality, good and bad, poor and evil, but the real situation is not so simple.
One can deal with the issue of Syrian refugees, it is worth asking whether Israel should bring in poor people who are knocking on its door, but not so. Ask the hard questions, bring up the problematic issues. Can terrorists come in with the refugees? Will the income of 2,000 refugees result in the flood of hundreds of thousands trying to invade Israel? Unfortunately, for me the answer is positive, so refugees need to stay on the north side of the border.
The issue of the Palestinians also needs to be discussed, but not in such a way, and certainly not in the way of blatant lies. Israel does not randomly shoot into a crowd of innocent civilians, our fighters do not hurt people for no reason, even if there is a wanted person in the crowd, and anyone who tries to imply otherwise, even if he does so for ratings and attention, is blatantly lying. It was appropriate that such a scene never came.
And on the fringes, regardless of one narrative or another, the filmmakers seem to have committed another sin - simply. The series boasts of Israeli actors and it is puzzling that they did not wake the director's attention to basic mistakes in the script. The Israel-Syria border is presented, in favor of the image of the "Moshe Rabbeinu" of that mysterious messiah, as a means of arid desert. The problem is that this border is in the greenest area of the State of Israel - the Golan Heights.
Even the security of the border, which for years has been identified as the most dangerous and widespread of Israeli borders, is entirely bizarre in the series - it turns out that anyone can access and cross the border, through a simple barbed wire fence. You may want to update the Iranians, who know.
I wish the viewers wouldn't make fun of them and give them a touch of depth, a touch of credibility, a touch of truth within the semi-fictional series.
"The Miracle Man," Netflix
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