Netanyahu demands criminal probe of soldiers who testified in ‘NAZA’ film on Gaza killings

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday demanded the attorney general and heads of the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet investigate troops who testified anonymously in the film “NAZA,” about Israel’s killing of Gazan civilians, for both spreading “false” libel and “revealing top secret information.”

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and Shin Bet head David Zini, Netanyahu demanded they “act urgently to uncover the identity of all those who are involved or appear in the libel film.”

He also called for “the opening of a criminal investigation and prosecution for serious information security offenses, criminal defamation, and harming Israel’s diplomatic and security interests.”

Netanyahu has previously expressed support for revoking the filmmakers’ Israeli citizenship.

‘NAZA,’ whose name is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” features testimonies from 24 digitally masked people who the filmmakers say are soldiers, mainly from intelligence units.

Testimony in the film alleges “mass killing on an industrial scale” in Gaza, bolstered by an AI-powered targeting system and permission for military strikes with as many as 500 expected civilian casualties, since the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, that sparked the war.

The IDF earlier this month published a sweeping, 17-page denial of the allegations, saying humans alone were responsible for selecting and approving strikes in Gaza, that no strike ever killed or was expected to kill 500 civilians, and that the claim was in any case unverifiable and baseless.

The military also said its directives “have never granted automatic authorization for strikes against targets placing a fixed number of civilians at risk,” such as 20 civilians in an attack on a junior operative or 200 civilians in an attack on a senior commander, as claimed in the film.

The military said the film “presents a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture of the IDF’s target planning and striking process” and that its narrative is “based on substantial factual errors stemming from manipulative misrepresentations of reality.”

Writing to Zini, Zamir and Baharav-Miara on Sunday, Netanyahu said he was appending the IDF’s “harsh response” to the film. He described the film as “presenting ‘testimonies by serving and released soldiers from Unit 8200,'” though the filmmakers never claimed the interviewees all hailed from the military signal intelligence unit.

“The film relates a false, misleading, and programmatic libel that defames the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces” and causes “severe harm to Israel’s global stature,” Netanyahu wrote. “Beyond that severe harm, there is concern that those involved in the libel film committed serious criminal offenses of exposing top-secret information, and created a breach in the information security of a highly sensitive intelligence unit.”

‘NAZA’ premiered to record applause at the Venice Film Festival on September 10, and went on to win the festival’s special jury prize. It is being distributed in cinemas in over 50 countries, but not Israel, and is expected to be made available for online streaming starting in November.

Related analysis: NAZA’s claims about IDF conduct in Gaza are grave. So are the film’s journalistic flaws

It was produced by The Guardian and co-created by journalist Yuval Abraham, whose investigative pieces in the Guardian and in left-wing Israeli outlets Local Call and +972 form the basis of the film.

Government supporters have vowed to hound Abraham and his co-creator Rachel Szor when they return to Israel, and have picketed the home of Szor’s parents in central Israel’s Savyon, calling, “Death sentence to traitors.”