The film that won an award at the Venice Festival was called "treason to the state" in Israel
A documentary about the methodology of selecting targets for Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip received resonance at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. Their documentary film "NAZA" received the Special Jury Prize. Photo: Elisabetta A. Villa / Getty Images
As reported by The Guardian, Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, in co-authorship 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 (so-called "collateral damage").
What is shown in the film
For 80 minutes, anonymous military personnel, whose faces are hidden and voices changed, talk about the target selection system. All filming takes place at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv. According to their testimonies, the army uses an artificial intelligence system for mass surveillance of telephone signals in Gaza to determine the location of Hamas militants.
The film features claims that airstrikes were deliberately carried out at night when militants were in residential buildings with their families, and that the command allowed 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 that they heard children crying through wiretaps in homes that were subsequently targeted. The film does not contain bloody footage from Gaza, focusing exclusively on the psychology of the perpetrators who justify their actions by being merely "technical specialists" or "small cogs" in the system.
The premiere at the Venice Film Festival ended with a 25-minute standing ovation. According to information from Variety, this was the longest ovation in the festival's history. The film received the Special Jury Prize.
Israel's Reaction
The film's success provoked outrage from the Israeli government. Minister of Culture Miki Zohar announced his intention to initiate a procedure to revoke the citizenship of the film's creators.
"It is impossible to comprehend this burning self-hatred of the filmmakers — they are ready to harm their own country for the applause of anti-Semites from around the world. This is treason to the state," says the minister.
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson's Unit 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.
The legal procedure for revoking citizenship exists in Israel, but in practice, it is applied very rarely and requires approval from the Minister of Interior, 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.