‘Fauda’ actor wounded in Gaza vows return to Israel screen

GAZA (AFP): An Israeli actor in the hit Netflix television series “Fauda” vowed Thursday to return to the screen after he was wounded while fighting Hamas militants in Gaza.

Idan Amedi was among a group of soldiers who were seriously wounded in a blast in the Palestinian territory where he was deployed after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7.

“It’s not a scene from Fauda, it’s real life,” Amedi, dressed in military fatigues, said in a video posted on social media on October 12 amid a call-up of more than 300,000 reservists in Israel.

Fauda, which means “chaos” in Arabic, has won Netflix fans worldwide for its gritty take on the exploits of an undercover Israeli unit that fights Palestinian militants.

“I will return to create, I will return to singing, I will return to acting,” Amedi told reporters on Thursday after he was released from hospital near Tel Aviv.

He spent two weeks in Gaza working to clear a network of Hamas tunnels, he said.

On January 8 he was seriously wounded in an explosion in which six soldiers were killed, he said.

When he arrived at the hospital, Amedi said he was “unrecognisable” with doctors giving him a John Doe tag.

But he said his experience had not deterred him from returning to Gaza.

“If God gives me enough power, I will also go back to fight for my country,” he said.

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack inside Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s relentless military campaign in Gaza since then has left at least 25,700 people dead, about 70 percent of them women and children, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry.