The devastating documentary NAZA, an investigation into Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, was shot at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, in part to avoid potential Israeli eavesdropping, presumably, and to facilitate shielding the identities of participants.
Those participants are 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers who reveal, in almost matter-of-fact tones, chilling details of a program that has caused catastrophic destruction of residential areas in Gaza, and massive loss of life among Palestinian civilians, including women and children. The sources – “whistleblowers” seems an appropriate term – come forward on condition of anonymity; they are filmed in silhouette, and their voices, as noted at the beginning of the film, have been digitally altered to conceal their identities.
One of the participants says that if he doesn’t hide his identity, “Israel will put me in jail for what I expose.”
NAZA, a late addition to the competition lineup in Venice, on Saturday night won the festival’s Special Jury Prize. The film is directed by Israeli Jews Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. Abraham appears on camera, interviewing his subjects on the rooftop; they explain that “NAZA” is a Hebrew acronym used by the Israel Defense Forces to signify collateral damage (נזק אגבי, or Nezek Agavi, per an interview included in press notes), in other words, an acceptable loss of civilian life incurred while trying to kill suspected Hamas militants. The film suggests the number of “NAZA” considered acceptable in each attack was elastic. In some cases, it would be under a dozen, but in others it could be 200 or even 500 people deemed permissible collateral damage, according to Israeli military personnel interviewed in the film.
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Interviewees speak to an attitude they say was prevalent among IDF soldiers that allowed them to view Palestinian civilians as expendable: “We need to erase Gaza… They deserve it,” one source describes as a common refrain among soldiers. Another reports soldiers commonly said, “There are no innocent people in Gaza.”
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor
The Guardian/JW Films
According to interviewees in the film, Israeli military intelligence officials made the deliberate choice to attack residential targets in Gaza at night, after concluding it was more likely they could hit a suspected Hamas target while he was at home with his family. Multiple whistleblowers describe vast Israeli surveillance capabilities achieved by tracking cell phones which emit a periodic ping that signals its location.
“We can activate every sensor on the phone,” claims one interviewee. Says another, “I heard the final moments of someone’s life.”
Perhaps most alarming of all, the whistleblowers claim Israeli intelligence used AI to determine human targets. The existence of the Lavender program, as it was called, was first reported by +972 Magazine and Local Call, with additional reporting by The Guardian (The Guardian is one of the producers of NAZA). Up to 70,000 human targets were determined by the Lavender AI system, according to sources interviewed in the documentary.
An IDF spokesperson has responded to the film by saying, “The IDF categorically rejects these allegations… Regarding the allegations concerning the use of artificial intelligence – decisions regarding the selection and approval of strikes in the IDF are made by human personnel only, in accordance with IDF guidelines, and not by artificial intelligence.”
The IDF spokesperson indicates he or she has not seen the film but cites unspecified “publications” which have reported on the content of the documentary.
“According to the publications,” the IDF spokesperson writes, “the film relies on anonymous testimonies from individuals whose identity cannot be verified, including whether they served in the IDF, in what capacity, or whether they were involved in the matters about which the allegations are being made.”
The IDF response continues, “The excerpts cited include claims regarding national and military strategy that are clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers. There are references to situations in which IDF Intelligence Directorate soldiers, who were allegedly interviewed for the film, by definition would not have been involved.”
The Israel Defense Forces statement goes on to say, “The IDF operates in the Gaza Strip in order to protect Israeli civilians and directs its military activity against terrorist organizations, foremost among them Hamas, in accordance with international law and the laws of armed conflict. As part of this, the IDF strikes military targets and makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to civilians.”
That statement notwithstanding, the Gaza Ministry of Health reports the IDF has killed over 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 173,000 since Israel launched its military retaliation after the Hamas terror attack on Israel of October 7, 2023.
According to some of the Israeli military personnel interviewed in NAZA, Israeli snipers deliberately fired on hungry Palestinians trying to reach food distribution sites. Another says he saw, through drone cameras, dogs eating the corpses of Palestinian victims of Israel military attacks as the bodies lay in the streets. Another whistleblower alleges a political unit of Israeli military intelligence spied on Palestinian victims of war crimes because “they were considered a security threat,” and collected kompromat to be used as needed to impeach the integrity of anyone who went public with allegations against the IDF.
“We called it peace thwarting,” says one source.
Some interviewees hint at feeling remorse, others point to merely completing a “mission” as assigned. One exclaims, “It’s so insanely fun to carry out a mission.”
L-R: EP Jonathan Glazer, director Rachel Szor, director Yuval Abraham, producer James Wilson, EP Paul Lewis, co-producer Ekaterina Ochagavia, and EP Harriet Gugenheim at the ‘NAZA’ premiere in Venice
Carlo Paloni/Getty Images
The perspective of Abraham and Szor and executive producer Jonathan Glazer on the mass killing of Palestinian civilians can be readily imagined. But moments interwoven among the interviews gesture towards a more astringent critique. One scene shows vehicles stopped in traffic as Israel pauses nationwide to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day. And there’s a shot of Israeli television airing a tribute to Claude Lanzmann, the director of the towering Holocaust film Shoah, which probed how ordinary Germans, Poles and others could look away while atrocities were committed all around them against Jews during World War II.
Abraham and Szor write in a directors’ statement, “The film lets us explore something deeper than we could in our investigative journalism alone: not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence. It is up to all of us to break that silence.”
Title: NAZA
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Directors: Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Sales agent: mk2
Running time: 1 hr 20 mins
