The Israeli military’s chief of general staff has asked military prosecutors to investigate potential leaks in a documentary about civilian deaths in Gaza, after the film won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and triggered a furious backlash from top officials.
The film, “NAZA,” has become a problem for the people in power because it puts their own insiders on the record. Shot on the rooftops of Tel Aviv at night in extreme secrecy over three years, it features testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders, including intelligence officers and soldiers, who describe what they say is the systemic killing of Palestinian civilians. That’s the part the authorities can’t stand. Not the war itself. The telling.
Who Has the Power
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused those behind the film of “incitement and antisemitism,” while Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said, “This is a dangerous attempt to deny us the legitimacy to defend ourselves against the worst of our enemies.” Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar went further and called on Monday for the documentary’s Israeli co-directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, to be stripped of their citizenship. The state’s response came fast, loud, and predictably defensive.
The film’s reception in Venice set off what the article describes as a firestorm among Israel’s leading politicians and military officials. Many of them called “NAZA” anti-Israel and lacking context, even though they acknowledged they have not seen the film. Netanyahu, his Cabinet members and also the prime minister’s opponents in next month’s key elections all lambasted the film, describing it as antisemitic and part of a broader campaign to defame Israel. Different factions, same script. The election machinery keeps turning while the same institutions close ranks.
The documentary’s central claims are blunt. According to the film, Israeli military insiders allege that Israel uses artificial intelligence to identify and bomb potential targets of the militant Hamas group in Gaza, often knowing that many civilians will likely be killed in an attack. The Israeli military has acknowledged using AI to help identify targets but says that a human being makes the final decision before a strike is carried out. That’s the official line. A human being signs off on the machine’s work.
Who Gets Crushed
Internationally, the war has drawn widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes. Nearly three years of war have destroyed most of Gaza and killed at least 73,789 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The scale is there in the numbers. So is the wreckage.
The film’s synopsis from The Guardian says “NAZA” — an acronym used by Israel’s military that means collateral damage — “reveals in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” The film is not yet available to audiences, though the filmmakers have said they intend to seek distribution in Israel, Europe and the United States. The Guardian said in a statement, “The testimonies it contains are true and we believe they deserve to be heard. The interviews were given by confidential journalistic sources.”
Abraham, speaking in an interview with journalist Raviv Drucker on Israel’s Channel 13, said the attacks on him and Szor showed why many of the film’s participants wanted to remain anonymous. He defended the film’s process for verifying the accounts and events described. He also questioned why Israeli journalists had done little to investigate civilian deaths and the military’s rules of engagement during the war. “Many soldiers told me they had been waiting for a chance to talk about this,” he said.
That line matters. It points to people inside the machine who were waiting for a crack in the wall.
What They Call “Defense”
Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office, denied the film’s allegations and questioned Abraham and Szor’s motivations. “What they wanted was awards from overseas from Israel haters. And they wanted standing applause,” he said, referring to the 25-minute applause that viewers in Venice gave the film. The contempt is familiar. Attack the messenger, question the crowd, protect the institution.
The response also reflects the chasm between how the war in Gaza is seen in Israel and how it’s seen internationally. Israelis have largely seen the war as an act of self-defense after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage — the deadliest day in Israel’s history. But the documentary’s existence, and the panic around it, shows how tightly the state polices the story of its own violence.
Co-produced by The Guardian and Jonathan Glazer, who was behind the 2023 Oscar-winning “The Zone of Interest,” the film is the second documentary from Abraham and Szor. It follows their 2025 Oscar-winning “No Other Land,” which chronicled Palestinians in part of the occupied West Bank as they face home demolitions by Israeli troops and attacks by Israeli settlers. The pattern is plain enough. People document what power does. Power tries to punish the documentation.