‘Blood libel’: Israeli politicians assail Israeli film alleging AI-powered killing in Gaza

Israeli politicians from across the spectrum on Sunday slammed filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor for their documentary “NAZA,” about Israel’s alleged AI-assisted killing of civilians in Gaza, which won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The Israel Defense Forces rejected claims made in the film, and specifically one featured in a promotional video of the documentary that it planned a strike during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in which 500 civilian deaths had been anticipated.

“The IDF has never planned, approved, or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians or anything near that number were anticipated to be killed. Nor was any credible claim raised throughout the war suggesting that an IDF strike had caused anything near that number of fatalities,” the military said.

The IDF said that Abraham and Szor “couldn’t possibly verify this claim, there is no real supporting evidence, and yet they published it anyway.”

In an unsourced report, Ynet said that IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir was expected to hold a discussion on Monday regarding the military’s response to the film, despite the IDF Spokespersons Unit already issuing multiple comments.

Yashar party chair Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff and frontrunner in the upcoming election, wrote on X on Sunday, “The choice of Israeli creators to stand on an international stage, present a distorted and one-sided picture, and cast moral aspersions on the soldiers who defend our home is moral blindness, detachment from reality, and damage to the State of Israel in a time of distress.”

Writing in English, Blue and White chair Benny Gantz, also a former IDF chief of staff, said, “Those behind the movie have never set foot in the battlefield — nor do I ever wish they will have to do so.

“But fighting in the most just war since Israel’s re-establishment, against a murderous group capable and willing to murder women & children — the IDF upholds itself to the highest moral and legal standard. As former IDF Chief of Staff & Minister of Defense, I can unequivocally attest to that. Anyone who lacks this basic understanding should just keep on making fiction!”

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman called the filmmakers “Israel’s enemies” who “took the war that was forced upon Israel after the October 7 massacre and turned it into a spectacle of slander and blood libels against the State of Israel, against the IDF, and against our magnificent fighters!”

He said Abraham and Szor are willing to “sell their country” for applause, and that they represented a small minority in Israel.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called the film “antisemitic” and cast the creators as “direct damage to the people of Israel.”

“To those who slander our heroic soldiers, who risk their lives so that we may live in peace and security, I say: You are a disgrace and a shame to the entire people of Israel. Get lost,” Ben Gvir wrote on X. “I’m sure your friends, our enemies in Hamas in Gaza, will welcome you with open arms!”

Culture Minister Miki Zohar filed a request on Monday with the Population and Immigration Authority on Monday to examine the possibility of revoking the citizenship of the filmmakers, following through on a threat he made a day earlier.

Zohar accused Abraham and Szor of “breaching their loyalty to the state and collaborating with the enemy,” said they should be investigated over how they found their materials for the movie, “and whether, in the process of obtaining or publishing them, actions were taken that amount to aiding the enemy during wartime.”

Zohar had accused the filmmakers on Sunday of “treason,” and called for their citizenship to be revoked.

“The searing self-hatred of the producers, who are willing to hurt their homeland for applause from the antisemites of the world, is inconceivable and is a betrayal of the country,” Zohar said in his earlier statement.

The revocation of nationality is legally possible in Israel, although it is rarely applied.

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the state can revoke the citizenship of those who carry out terror attacks or actions that constitute treason.

The law requires the interior minister to submit the revocation request, the justice minister to approve it, and judges to validate it.

Without explicitly defending the filmmakers, The Democrats MK Naama Lazimi on Sunday slammed Zohar for seeking to revoke their citizenship for “treason,” citing the government’s own failures and links to enemy countries.

“That’s the madness in its ultimate form — honestly, you don’t need ‘hasbara terror attacks’ when you have ministers like that,” she wrote on X.

Lazimi said that from the government’s point of view, the Qatargate scandal and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s overseeing of Qatari funding to Hamas while reportedly ignoring warnings ahead of the October 7, 2023, massacre is “just fine.”

In the so-called Qatargate affair, Netanyahu’s adviser Yonatan Urich, along with former Netanyahu spokesman Eli Feldstein and ex-campaign adviser Yisrael Einhorn, is accused of taking money to spearhead a public relations campaign for Qatar in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre, despite the Gulf state’s strong ties to the terror group, and doing so while working in the PMO.

Abraham and Szor say they used conversations with 24 different Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who spoke on condition that their identities be protected.

Abraham has defended the film’s reporting, done in partnership with Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, calling it “rigorous” and its findings reported by other mainstream journalists as well.

He asserted that the filmmakers had received threats but did not go into more detail.

The IDF already on Friday said it “categorically rejects” the allegations made in the film, saying that decisions regarding the selection and approval of strikes were made “by human personnel only… and not by artificial intelligence.”

Also, in its initial response to the film, the IDF said that “the excerpts cited include claims regarding national and military strategy that are clearly beyond the knowledge of junior-level soldiers,” and that 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 war, which was sparked by the Hamas-led October 2023 terror onslaught against Israel, has killed over 73,500 people in Gaza, including more than 1,330 since the October 2025 ceasefire, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the enclave, although the toll does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall toll is largely accurate, with IDF officials estimating that two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative.

Abraham and Szor were also part of the team behind the 2024 documentary “No Other Land,” which chronicled Israel’s demolitions in the Palestinian West Bank village of Masafer Yatta and won an Academy Award for best documentary feature.

Emanuel Fabian and AFP contributed to this report.