Israelis in NY protest, display Oct. 7 images outside sold-out North America premiere of ‘NAZA’

NEW YORK — Dozens of pro-Israel protesters in New York City on Saturday afternoon picketed the North American premiere of “NAZA,” about the alleged AI-assisted killing of Gazan civilians, accusing the filmmakers of ignoring the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the Gaza war.

Organizers of the rally outside Lincoln Center, where the documentary was playing as part of the New York Film Festival, parked several vehicles with LED screens showing images of people who were abducted on October 7 and held hostage by terror groups in Gaza.

“Context is not censorship. It’s responsibility,” the trucks said, alongside messages about Israel’s measures meant to mitigate civilian deaths in Gaza.

Protesters held Israeli and US flags as well as placards with images of the massacre in southern Israel. “Learn the facts. Know the truth,” the signs read.

The protesters were joined by Rom El-Hai and Shalev Bitton, who both survived the massacre at the Nova music festival, along with Yunis Alkarnawi, a Bedouin Israeli who saved people from the festival.

The film, whose name is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” purports to show that the IDF used artificial intelligence for Gaza targeting and accepted high numbers of civilian deaths in the early stages of the war.

The IDF has denied the film’s main claims, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed legislation to strip Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the filmmakers, of their Israeli citizenship. Government supporters have also picketed the home of Szor’s parents, railing against “traitors.”

El-Hai also said at the rally in New York on Saturday that Abraham and Szor were “traitors,” and that “liars” like them existed in Jewish communities since the time of the Bible.

Rom El-Hai, a survivor of the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova music festival, told protestors outside the New York Film Festival premiere of “NAZA” that “it doesn’t surprise [him]” that the festival would screen a film made by “traitors” to the Israeli cause:

“If there is someone here… pic.twitter.com/Z1j8vSZTnl

— Variety (@Variety) September 26, 2026

In an interview following his remarks, El-Hai told JTA that Abraham and Szor “should be punished” and that they cannot “live their life in Israel like nothing happened.”

“People need to understand there is a price for what they’re doing,” he said.

The Israeli-American Council advocacy group led the protest, and its chief communities officer, Noa Peri-Jensch, was also one of the speakers.

“We mourn every innocent life lost in this war, Israeli or Palestinian,” she said. “But compassion for Palestinian civilians does not require [us] to erase October 7, ignore Hamas or accept one narrative without questioning it.”

Peri-Jensch told JTA in an interview that she was not calling for “NAZA” screenings to be canceled, but that screenings at film festivals should be paired “with context,” like panels featuring October 7 survivors.

Asked about Israeli officials’ threats toward the filmmakers and the demonstrators calling them traitors, Peri-Jensch said she “cannot comment on what people in Israel do, I can only comment here,” and added that viewers “deserve to know the full scope.”

Meanwhile, about a dozen people involved with the left-wing group Israelis for Peace rallied in solidarity with Abraham and Szor. The left-wing protesters held signs that read, “We stand by the countless victims in Gaza and Rachel & Yuval for speaking truth to power.”

Roni Tamari, who organized the rally in support of the filmmakers, said the Israeli reaction to “NAZA” was “out of proportion,” and that she felt it was “actually very disrespectful” to publicly display images of people wounded and killed in the Hamas onslaught.

Tide shifting on Zionism?

Nearby, dozens of people waited in a box office line that stretched around the corner.

John Kwiatkowski, senior manager of publicity and communications for Film at Lincoln Center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the two weekend screenings of “NAZA” had “sold out almost immediately.”

At least one local politician scored a ticket: Brad Lander, the self-described “liberal Zionist” Jewish progressive who is running as the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th Congressional District after winning the nomination with the endorsement of New York’s anti-Zionist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

David Lawson, a Jewish resident of Queens who bought a ticket for the premiere, told JTA shortly before the screening that he expected to see protesters against “NAZA” at the premiere.

Lawson said he was “very excited” to see the film, not just for what it will say “about Israel, but also just about the alarming use of AI in warfare in general.”

He added that he hoped “that the tide is shifting on acceptance of Zionism in the United States,” and that support for “NAZA” was an example of that shift.

The documentary has received early acclaim, earning a whopping 25-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice Festival and going on to win the festival’s Special Jury Prize.

However, the filmmakers have also been accused of failing to verify claims about the IDF’s conduct in Gaza or provide context on how other militaries handle collateral damage in urban war zones.

One allegation featured in a promotional video for the documentary is that the IDF planned a strike during the Gaza war in which 500 civilian deaths had been anticipated.

The IDF has denied that claim as “completely false” and said that the filmmakers had failed to verify it. The military said it “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.”

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.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.