Controversial Gaza documentary ‘NAZA’ to stream online for free in November

“NAZA” co-director Yuval Abraham on Thursday said the controversial film about the killing of civilians in Gaza would be published online for free in November “because of the public interest and significance.”

The documentary, based on Abraham’s investigative journalistic pieces in far-left Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call, features interviews with 24 digitally masked Israeli soldiers, mainly intelligence officers, and alleges the Israel Defense Force 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.

According to The Guardian, which produced the film, it is slated for cinematic release on September 28 in 56 countries and territories, but not Israel, the West Bank or Gaza.

“The film has been offered to a number of distributors and cinemas in Israel. The Guardian will also be exploring other ways to enable the film to be seen in the occupied Palestinian territories,” the newspaper said.

In his first post on X since controversy erupted around “NAZA” in Israel, Abraham said the film had been offered to cinemas in the country free of charge.

“Screening it would be a brave decision in the face of great violence that seeks to bury it,” Abraham said in the Hebrew-language post.

The film, whose name is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” premiered to record applause at the Venice Film Festival on September 10, and went on to win the festival’s special jury prize. It hasn’t been released publicly yet.

Among the film’s allegations is one, featured in a promotional video of the documentary, that the IDF planned a strike during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in which 500 civilian deaths had been anticipated. The IDF has denied that claim as “completely false.”

“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 the filmmakers “couldn’t possibly verify this claim, there is no real supporting evidence, and yet they published it anyway.”

Testimony in the film also alleges “mass killing on an industrial scale” in Gaza, with one anonymous interviewee describing an AI-assisted system that identified targets using data gathered from thousands of hacked mobile phones. The IDF has responded that decisions on the selection and approval of strikes were made “by human personnel only… and not by artificial intelligence.”

Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Thursday that an IDF representative had viewed “NAZA” for the first time and compiled an internal report summarizing its allegations.

The military representative watched the film in Bologna, Italy, after its creators declined IDF requests for a screening, according to Channel 12.

The military is now examining the claims and will determine how to respond, Channel 12 reported.

The film’s success at the festival led Culture Minister Miki Zohar to accuse Abraham and his co-director Rachel Szor of treason and to call for their Israeli citizenship to be revoked. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since said he would introduce legislation to revoke the citizenship of Israelis who “slander the IDF abroad.”

Meanwhile, government supporters have protested outside the home of Szor’s parents, and vowed to hound Abraham and Szor when the two co-directors return to Israel.

Writing on X, Abraham said “the threats won’t help” and that he and Szor would return to Israel “and keep fighting for the future of this place alongside many partners.”

“Many incorrect things” have been said about the film, which is backed by “three years of comprehensive journalistic investigation,” said Abraham.

He added that after his Local Call pieces made little waves in Israel, “now, for the first time, something has cracked in the screen of apathy — and that’s a positive thing.”

Abraham said there were thousands of soldiers in Israel who “will watch the film and personally recognize” the killings it describes.

“Even if it’s scary, it’s your duty to find the way to attest to what you saw. You’ll be told the truth should be hidden for the sake of hasbara abroad, but that’s bogus,” Abraham said, referring to Israeli public diplomacy.

Alluding to accusations that the film ignores the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the Gaza war, Abraham said that “recognizing the horrors in Gaza doesn’t diminish for a second the criminal October 7 massacre, which Hamas is responsible for, which soldiers talk about in the film, and which has no justification.”

The October 7 onslaught saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.

Israel’s ensuing offensive in Gaza has killed over 73,400 people, according to the Strip’s Hamas-led health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The IDF believes the Hamas health ministry toll is largely accurate, and that two to three civilians were killed for every combatant.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.