British doc alleging IDF misconduct in Gaza nominated for International Emmy

British documentary “Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War,” featuring IDF soldier testimonies critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, was one of four nominees for the International Emmy Award in the current affairs category, the panel announced Wednesday.

The documentary, which aired on British ITV in November 2025, was made by British-Iranian director Ben Zand and Israeli producer Matan Cohen.

Cohen is based in Israel and interviewed the soldiers featured in the documentary.

At the time the film was released, the producers said the soldiers’ accounts could raise serious questions about IDF conduct in Gaza and potential breaches of international law.

The soldiers’ testimonies included in “Breaking Ranks” said the war waged in Gaza was marked by relaxed rules of engagement leading to the gratuitous killing of innocents, the use of civilians as human shields and orders to destroy buildings without clear military justification.

The documentary assembled on-camera interviews with serving and former IDF personnel, some speaking publicly for the first time. Their testimony offers a portrait of a military campaign that several participants described as unrestrained and morally disorienting.

Among the most striking claims is that of a tactic dubbed the “mosquito protocol,” by which Palestinians were allegedly forced to walk through Hamas tunnels wearing a vest equipped with a smartphone that transmitted GPS data to Israeli units above ground.

“You send the human shield underground. As he walks down the tunnel, he maps it all for you. He has an iPhone in his vest, and as he walks, it sends back GPS information,” said a tank commander simply identified as Daniel. “The commanders saw how it works. And the practice spread like wildfire. After about a week, every company was operating its own mosquito.”

In October 2024, The New York Times reported that while IDF troops have often used drones and sniffer dogs to conduct reconnaissance operations in the often-booby-trapped Hamas tunnels as well as in homes and buildings rigged with explosives, at times they used detained Palestinians — referring to detainees brought in from Israel for such a purpose as “wasps” and those captured locally and used in the field as “mosquitoes.”

The IDF has previously denied allegations of using human shields, opening internal probes into such claims.

The IDF responded to the documentary’s claims in a written statement last year, saying it “remains committed to the rule of law” and that “allegations of misconduct are thoroughly examined,” adding that several investigations by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division are ongoing.

The IDF has long denied intentional harm to civilians, insisting that it works to limit harm to innocents, even as Hamas operates among them.

After “Breaking Ranks” aired last year, Zandland — Zand’s production company — chose to put the film on YouTube after the testimonies of the IDF whistleblowers generated headlines in the mainstream UK press.

Zand told Deadline at the time, “It’s not like these films make huge amounts of money, so you’re effectively doing it for this kind of earnest reason of wanting to bring truth into the world and tell important stories.”

The documentary’s nomination comes amid the ongoing storm over the Israeli-led film “NAZA,” which features interviews with 24 digitally masked Israeli soldiers, mainly intelligence officers, alleging the Israel Defense Forces used AI for Gaza targeting and accepted high numbers of civilian deaths as acceptable collateral damage in the early stages of the war. The IDF has denied the main claims of the film.

“NAZA” won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Unlike NAZA, several of the soldiers in “Breaking Ranks” were interviewed with their faces and names shown.

Other Israel-related films nominated for an International Emmy included Louis Theroux’s “The Settlers,” a BBC documentary about Israeli outposts and Jewish ultranationalists in the West Bank.

In the news category, Al Jazeera’s “Missing in Gaza,” a documentary project focusing on the search for missing individuals in the Gaza Strip, was nominated as well.

The winners will be announced on November 23 in New York.

The International Emmys are an extension of the US Emmy Awards and honor TV programs initially produced and aired outside the United States.

Stav Levaton contributed to this report.