Across Israel, politicians, military leaders and much of the media are trying to discredit a documentary that almost none of them have seen. Produced by the Guardian, NAZA examines the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israel Defense Forces to bombard Gaza after Hamas’s brutal 7 October 2023 attacks. Named after the Israeli military acronym euphemistically used for “collateral damage”, NAZA features interviews with 24 anonymous insiders who reflect on their role in the death-dealing. Israeli leaders have branded the film a “blood libel” and “fiction”. Its Oscar-winning directors, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, face being stripped of their citizenship for treason.
This is absurd. NAZA shows how bureaucratic distance and routine can turn extreme violence into ordinary work. More than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 children, have been killed in the campaign by Israel’s military. A democracy that values life would at least investigate the film’s claims. Instead Israel’s government, which says it is committed to democratic accountability, is attacking journalists.
The allegations in NAZA come from military insiders. For many, it does not appear to be remorse that drives them to speak out. Some are proud of what they have done. One recalls the “insane fun” of planning airstrikes in Gaza. Crucially, Israeli soldiers describe the military accepting large numbers of Palestinian casualties as the price for killing a single Hamas operative. When civilian fatalities rise to as many as hundreds for one enemy combatant, proportionality looks less like a military assessment and more like a licence for mass death.
NAZA’s story is not only about death and destruction but also some of the people behind it: polite, educated members of Israel’s liberal middle class, much like the directors themselves. They built and operated a system that told them women and children would die in large numbers. Yet they told themselves that responsibility for the deaths of innocent Palestinians lay elsewhere. The acronym, NAZA, turns possible fatalities into a number per target. By the time an operator approves a strike, morality has disappeared up the chain of command.
An election campaign has seen Israeli politicians shamefully weaponise controversy to outflank each other on the right. If such leaders are saying that the conduct of the Israeli military is beyond independent review, that can hardly be consistent with the commitment to the rule of law. Israel’s government might invoke national security to defend its actions. But the film builds on revelations first published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call and the Guardian between 2023 and 2025. Ominously, Israel’s domestic intelligence service may be involved in a leak investigation. By turning the army on the documentary’s directors, Israel is making an example of them. Far-right activists target their families by making threats. If the filmmakers were to return to Israel now, their lives might well be in danger.
The Committee to Protect Journalists and 10 other press-freedom groups have warned that Israel must protect its journalists and filmmakers – not brand them traitors and paint targets on their backs. Yet the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has seized on the controversy to threaten anyone who “defames” Israeli soldiers with loss of citizenship. Rather than investigate alleged crimes, he would punish those who expose them. Israel’s leaders ought to be protecting those who scrutinise power, not pointing a mob towards them.
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