Film that won an award at Venice Festival called 'betrayal of the state' in Israel

As reported by The Guardian, Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, in collaboration with British journalists, made a film based on anonymous interviews with 24 IDF officers and Israeli intelligence personnel.

The film, titled "NAZA," is an acronym used by the military to denote the number of civilian casualties in airstrikes (the so-called "collateral damage").

What is shown in the film

For 80 minutes, anonymous military personnel, whose faces are hidden and voices altered, recount the target selection system. All filming takes place at night on Tel Aviv rooftops. According to their testimonies, the army uses an artificial intelligence system for mass surveillance of telephone signals in Gaza to pinpoint the locations of Hamas militants.

The film features claims that airstrikes were intentionally carried out at night, when militants were in residential homes with their families, and that the command permitted the deaths of dozens or even hundreds of civilians for the elimination of a single target.

Some of the interviewees, who worked remotely as data analysts, admit to having heard children crying through wiretaps in homes that were subsequently struck. The film does not contain bloody footage from Gaza, focusing exclusively on the psychology of the perpetrators, who justify their actions by claiming to be merely 'technical specialists' or 'small cogs' in the system.

The premiere at the Venice Film Festival concluded with a 25-minute standing ovation. According to Variety, it was the longest ovation in the festival's history. The film received the Special Jury Prize.

Israel's Reaction

The film's success provoked indignation from the Israeli government. Minister of Culture Miki Zohar announced his intention to initiate procedures to revoke the citizenship of the film's creators.

"It is impossible to comprehend this burning self-hatred of the film's creators — they are ready to harm their own country for the applause of anti-Semites from around the world. This is treason against the state," said the minister.

The Israel Defense Forces press service also issued a categorical denial of the facts presented. The IDF stated that anonymous testimonies cannot be verified and questioned the affiliation of these individuals with the military. The command emphasized that the state and military strategy discussed in the film is entirely beyond the scope of information accessible to junior military personnel, and that the army makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to the civilian population.

A legal procedure for revoking citizenship exists in Israel, but in practice, it is rarely applied and requires approval from the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Minister of Justice, and a final court decision.

For directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, this is not the first scandal — a year ago, their previous documentary film "No Other Land" received an Oscar award and a wave of criticism in their homeland.

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