Op-ed

Storm over ‘NAZA’ doc is a massive boost to the Likud campaign

New film battering Israel over alleged Gaza atrocities, bitterly denied by the IDF, has been weaponized by Netanyahu and the right, linking center-left candidates to anti-Israel narratives and stoking conspiracy theories

By Shalom Yerushalmi
  • Shalom Yerushalmi is the political analyst for Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew current affairs website
 15 September 2026, 4:12 pm
Directors Rachel Szor, left, and Yuval Abraham, winners of the special jury prize for the film ‘NAZA’, pose for photographers at the awards photo call during the closing ceremony of the 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on September 12, 2026. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

The bottom line is inescapable: The documentary NAZA — named after the Hebrew military acronym for “collateral damage,” and alleging that the IDF routinely approved strikes in Gaza knowing large numbers of civilians would be killed — has inflicted severe damage on the country and the military.

Following the enormous international publicity it received after winning the Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend, it has also dealt a devastating political blow to the anti-Netanyahu “change bloc.”

The ultimate paradox is that NAZA directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor may end up inadvertently helping the right-wing government remain in power, empowering it to continue the very alleged policies and atrocities they are seeking to expose — policies and atrocities bitterly denied by the IDF and many coalition and opposition politicians.

In recent days, with just six weeks to go before the election, Israel has been in internal uproar over various October 7 conspiracy theories, actively encouraged by the outgoing government and right-wing propagandists. These baseless claims — of treason from within the Israeli security establishment ostensibly enabling the Hamas invasion — have become a core component of the election campaigns of Likud and some its allied factions. Now NAZA, coupled with the highly critical speeches delivered by its creators before an admiring audience in Venice, is pouring gasoline on this fire of incitement.

The message currently being broadcast by the right as regards NAZA is unmistakably clear: Here are the leftist traitors who worked with Hamas and coordinated the horrific October 7 attack, continuing their treacherous work and perhaps even seeking to complete it by other means.

It was no coincidence that Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar rushed on Monday to demand an official investigation into whether there had been active cooperation between the filmmakers and Hamas (Hebrew link), and suggested the terror organization may have even supplied them with raw footage.

This comes alongside right-wing allegations that the filmmakers actively harmed state security, a grave legal offense carrying severe penalties under Israeli law.

In explosive cultural moments like these, the “change bloc” — largely comprising centrist and left-wing Zionist parties — always pays the immediate political price. The right knows exactly where to point the spotlight, and every response or social media post from a left-wing figure triggers an immediate, brutal backlash.

When attorney Gaby Lasky, a candidate for the Democrats — the newly merged, staunchly left-wing faction of the historic Labor and Meretz parties — urged an end to the abusive rhetoric against the directors and more broadly argued against the silencing of artists, and protest leader Moshe Radman, another Democrats candidate, tweeted that “it is good that there is criticism,” Likud operatives pounced.

They immediately demanded that Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main election rival, cancel his party’s surplus-vote agreement with the Democrats, in a social media post shared by Netanyahu. (This agreement is a standard, pre-election pact where two allied parties pool their leftover votes to potentially secure an extra parliamentary seat.)

Likud framed the Democrats as a party “whose members provide backing and support to the creators of the antisemitic film,” demanding Eisenkot sever the electoral tie.

Likud naturally piled on, declaring that “this is Eisenkot’s coalition: a combination of the left, the radical left, and [Ra’am party leader Mansour] Abbas’s Muslim Brotherhood.” Later in the day, Topaz Luk, a senior communications adviser to Netanyahu, declared on social media that “if this bloc [of opposition parties] wins the elections, they will form a dangerous left-wing government together. We must not lend a hand to this.”

By evening, Netanyahu had cleverly tied the threads together, directly linking the filmmakers to Democrats leader Yair Golan, to the former military advocate general, and to Eliran Eliya, a candidate on Eisenkot’s Yashar slate who has chaired the Directors Guild. The guild issued a statement supporting the filmmakers; Yashar hit back that Eliya stepped down from the guild last month to enter politics.

Netanyahu refused to let up, and several more videos in this vein circulated late into the night.

On Tuesday afternoon, Netanyahu released another video. Looking positively giddy in dark sunglasses, he declared: “Members of Yair Golan’s party not only failed to condemn [NAZA director Abraham], they praised him. That is not surprising either. There are people there who promoted refusal to serve, and there is a lawyer there who defends terrorists.

“It has now become clear: Gadi Eisenkot will not cancel his surplus-vote agreement with Yair Golan. He is going with him. Do you know who else is going with him?” he asked, going on to reference opposition party leaders: “[Avigdor] Liberman, who always talks right and goes left, and [Naftali] Bennett and [Yair] Lapid too, and all of them together will go with Mansour Abbas.

“That is the real left-wing bloc. And since I know IDF soldiers are dear to you, do not vote for them,” he warned. “Do not fall into the trap.”

This negative campaign will undoubtedly continue relentlessly through election day.

Eisenkot himself strongly condemned the film and its creators, stating they had “stood on an international stage, presented a distorted and one-sided narrative, and cast a moral stain on the soldiers defending our home.” That, of course, did not persuade right-wing spokespeople, who insisted on linking the filmmakers to the outgoing coalition’s political opponents.

The opposition subsequently went on the defensive in a panic reminiscent of historic left-wing political blunders.

It mirrored the shock that followed entertainer Dudu Topaz’s infamous “chakhchakhim” speech in 1981 – when days before the elections, the popular Topaz branded Likud voters as riffraff; MK Uri Or’s derogatory remarks about Moroccans in 1998, which ended his political career; actress Tiki Dayan’s condescending comments about Likud voters in 1999, tagging them as ignorant masses; and artist Yair Garbuz’s infamous 2015 speech mocking right-wing “amulet kissers.”

In each of these historic instances, left-wing elites publicly mocked working-class, traditional, and Mizrahi voters, deeply offending them and driving them straight to the ballot box to vote for Likud.

People I spoke with on Monday in the “change bloc” repeatedly described the events at the Venice Film Festival in particular, and NAZA in general, with a single, loaded Hebrew word reserved for a terror attack: pigua.

Lasky eventually deleted the post in which she had written that “we must not silence moral questions that have to be asked.” The “change bloc” recognized the collateral damage the film was doing and forced her and others into a rapid retreat.

In effect, the opposition parties were left with little choice after IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and the IDF spokesperson publicly condemned the documentary. Zamir — who is ironically smeared by Likud candidates as a “Kaplanist,” a derogatory catch-all term derived from Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street used to brand anyone as an anti-government leftist dissident — stated that the film amounted to “false and mendacious accusations, a film that adopts the narratives of Israel’s enemies, is intended to deny our right to defend ourselves, and endangers soldiers in the field.”

NAZA and the public comments by its creators are undeniably feeding antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda around the world. But here, the extremist ministers and Knesset members of the right share the responsibility for all that with those who hate the state — and there is no shortage of either.

On Monday I met a friend who has lived in Los Angeles for many years and is active in several major Jewish organizations. She said that hatred toward AIPAC — once regarded as an essential and universally popular bipartisan pro-Israel lobby — is now soaring, to say nothing of other organizations with any connection to Israel.

Beyond the devastating images coming out of Gaza, she pointed to the actions of far-right ministers, primarily Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and the relentless, inflammatory statements about the need for “total destruction” in the Strip, daily killings and mass “voluntary emigration.”

“In the face of statements like these, no amount of public diplomacy can help,” my friend from America lamented.

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