Kibbutz Sa’ad in Israel. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

“Fauda” producer Maria Feldman and Israeli director Dror Shaul have collaborated to create a new series about an American who moves to a kibbutz and becomes its leader in defending Israel’s borders, Variety reported on Wednesday.

“The Collective” follows a character named William who is caught up in an incident that forces him to leave the US. Because his uncle works in the Israeli government, he joins a group of Americans heading to Israel to start a kibbutz, one located on the edge of Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. Soon enough, Israel is preparing for a war and members of the kibbutz are expected to help defend the young state.

“Many of the volunteers didn’t really understand what they were signing up for. Some stay, some leave, some even die,” said Feldman, who called the show “at times half comedy, half tragedy.” She said the drama is envisioned as a three-season series, with each building up to a different conflict: the 1956 Suez War, the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

William steps up and leads the kibbutz in defending Israel’s border against the Egyptian army.

Shaul is the show’s creator, writer and director, and was born and raised in Kibbutz Kissufim, near the Gaza Strip. The series is inspired by his father, a New York-born musician who was involved in its jazz scene of the early 1950s, according to Variety. Most of the series will be in English and its soundtrack will include classics from the 1940s and 1950s, as well as icons such as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Brook Benton, Pete Seeger and Billie Holiday.

“‘The Collective’ is an epic series that brings alive a story that has not been told before, a modern Western of sorts,” he said. “More than seven decades after the group of Americans sat around a campfire singing songs by Brook Benton, Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, the lyrics of the immortal ‘This Land Is Your Land’ beg the question of why the kibbutz flame cannot die.”