Key Takeaways:
- “NAZA” is the Venice-winning Gaza documentary almost nobody has seen yet. Built around 24 anonymous Israeli military and intelligence sources, it has already been hailed as an exposé of Israeli “genocidal policy.”
- Its central evidence may cut the other way. The film treats Israel’s calculations of potential civilian harm as proof of deliberate killing, even though such assessments are part of lawful targeting under the laws of war.
- The biggest claims remain hard to test. The film’s sources are anonymous, its alleged “500 civilian” strike approval is publicly uncorroborated, and its genocide framing arrives as the legal standard for proving genocidal intent is itself under pressure at The Hague.
It may be the most famous film almost nobody has yet been able to watch.
Since “NAZA” premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week, the 80-minute documentary has been treated less like a film and more like the findings of a forensic investigation – quite the feat for a documentary built largely around anonymous testimony filmed on darkened Tel Aviv rooftops. It won the festival’s Special Jury Prize and, as the credits rolled, received a roughly 25-minute standing ovation, reportedly the longest in Venice history.
The headline of Variety’s review thundered that it was a “Devastating Exposé of Israeli Genocidal Policy.”
The Hollywood Reporter went with: “Inside ‘NAZA,’ the Bombshell Exposé on IDF’s War in Gaza.”
And then there was Xan Brooks at The Guardian who, perhaps unsurprisingly given that the newspaper produced the documentary, described it as “devastating” in an interview with directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
Naturally, much attention has focused on Abraham, one of the Israeli directors behind the Oscar-winning 2024 documentary “No Other Land.” Clearly, he has form here: that film performed much the same trick with Masafer Yatta, muddling inconvenient legal facts and distinctions into a far tidier story of Palestinian dispossession.
At Venice, Abraham was asked about comparisons between Gaza and the Holocaust.
“When we say ‘never again’ and that we have to learn from what happened in the Holocaust,” he responded, “the way to do that is to think about patterns that can be seen and observed in the present. I’m not saying [the situation in Gaza] is the same or identical. I don’t think it is. But what we should be doing is recognising these similar patterns of dehumanization and killing.”
It’s all so perfectly curated, the pro-Palestinian PR machine whirring at full speed: a documentary seen by little more than a handful of journalists, film critics and reliably right-on celebrities at Venice is already making waves.
And that’s exactly the point. Produce the film. Premiere it at one of the world’s most prestigious festivals. Win a prize. Break the applause record. Generate glowing reviews declaring an Israeli “genocidal policy.” Have Israeli politicians condemn it. Then present that condemnation as further evidence of the film’s courage.
By the time most people actually get the opportunity to see “NAZA”, its conclusion has already been written for them.
And that’s important because the case made by the film is considerably less secure than the reception surrounding it would suggest.
Strip away the silhouetted interviewees, the nighttime Tel Aviv rooftops and the Holocaust comparisons, and “NAZA” relies on a series of increasingly large jumps: from anticipated civilian casualties to deliberate civilian killing; from AI-assisted intelligence to machines supposedly deciding who dies; from the experiences of anonymous operators to conclusions about national policy; and ultimately from disputed wartime targeting decisions to genocide.
The title itself supplies the film with its central metaphor.
“Naza” is the Hebrew military shorthand derived from nezek agavi, meaning “collateral damage.” Within the targeting process described in the film, a “naza” number represents an estimate of civilians who could be incidentally harmed in an attack on a military target.
Its rendering in English as “NAZA” carries a resonance that is difficult to miss in a film that explicitly invites comparisons with the Holocaust: the descendants of the Nazis’ victims are recast for the audience as perpetrators of comparable patterns of “dehumanization and killing.”
It is grotesquely effective.
But there is a rather large problem.
The very concept around which “NAZA” constructs its indictment does not demonstrate that Palestinian civilians were Israel’s targets.
It demonstrates that they were being counted as civilians.
The Evidence That Proves the Opposite
International humanitarian law does not prohibit every attack in which civilians are expected to die. If it did, virtually no military operation against an enemy embedded in a populated area could lawfully take place.
Instead, the laws of war require militaries to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, assess anticipated civilian harm before attacking, take feasible precautions to minimize that harm and refrain from an attack where the expected civilian toll would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
If circumstances change, an attack must be cancelled or suspended where it becomes apparent that the target is not a military objective, or that the expected civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
That is not some convenient Israeli formulation. It is set out in Article 57 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and reflected in customary international humanitarian law.
In other words, the existence of a system for estimating how many civilians might be harmed in an attack is not evidence of a system designed to kill civilians.
Quite the opposite: it reflects the fundamental distinction between the military target being attacked and civilians who might be unintentionally harmed in the process. Making that assessment is a requirement of lawful targeting.
And a civilian-casualty estimate, stripped of everything else, tells us remarkably little. Proportionality is not judged by plucking a number from a targeting file and declaring it shocking. It depends on the military objective, the threat posed by the target and the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
That context is precisely what “NAZA” removes.
“The IDF knew civilians might die” becomes “the IDF chose to kill civilians.”
“The military calculated collateral damage” becomes “the military calculated how many civilians it was prepared to murder.”
And from there, the leap to genocide becomes considerably easier.
But genocide requires something far more specific: an intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. International courts have repeatedly treated that specific intent as distinct from even other grave violations of the laws of war.
A mechanism designed to distinguish a military target from civilians who may be incidentally harmed does not establish such an intent.
If anything, taken on its own terms, it demonstrates the opposite: that civilians were being identified as civilians, not designated as targets.
So What Is “NAZA”?
For those who have managed to avoid the gushing reviews, or the Israeli government’s equally full-throated condemnation, the film itself is remarkably simple.
Directors Abraham and Szor spent roughly three years interviewing 24 people presented as Israeli soldiers and military intelligence personnel involved in operations relating to Gaza.
All 24 are anonymous, making it impossible to verify their ranks, units, dates of service, responsibilities or, crucially, whether they were actually in a position to know the things they claim.
The documentary builds on investigations previously published by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian. Those reports concerned Israeli surveillance, intelligence gathering and automated or AI-assisted systems used to help identify suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives.
Among them is “Lavender,” a system reportedly used to sift enormous quantities of intelligence data and identify or prioritize suspected members of terrorist organizations.
Interviewees describe monitoring Palestinians’ phones, tracking suspects and using technological systems to generate potential targets. One account describes exploiting indications that a suspected operative had returned to his family home. Reviewers recount testimony about monitoring a child’s phone for words such as “daddy” and “home” in order to establish when her father was present.
The film turns those procedures into its larger thesis: that technology rendered killing remote, bureaucratic and routine.
Yet there is a rather glaring irony running through the evidence presented as proof of that thesis.
Again and again, the anonymous witnesses supposedly exposing indiscriminate Israeli killing describe a system that differentiates between the military target and civilians who may be harmed around that target.
An interviewee says that “20 NAZA” became a benchmark, referring to an anticipated level of collateral harm associated with a proposed strike. Another discusses an alleged error rate in an automated intelligence system.
The audience is invited to hear this as a confession.
But assessing anticipated civilian harm is precisely what a military is supposed to do before attacking a military target.
That is perhaps “NAZA’s” central wager: that audiences will mistake evidence that civilians were counted for evidence that civilians were targeted.
The Israeli military assessed how many civilians might be unintentionally harmed. The film reframes this as deciding how many civilians it was prepared to kill.
The Israeli military sought to establish when a Hamas operative was at a particular location. The film reframes that as a technological system designed to kill families.
In short, a civilian-harm calculation exists precisely because the civilians are not the Israeli military’s target. And yet, its existence is being offered as evidence that killing civilians was the point.
Fail to assess collateral harm and Israel would be accused of reckless disregard for civilian life. Assess it, and the calculation itself becomes the confession.
Among the film’s most explosive allegations is that an Israeli strike was approved despite an anticipated civilian toll of 500.
Asked for the largest anticipated civilian toll he remembers being approved for a strike, one of the anonymous interviewees says: “I don’t know how many were killed … but there was once an approval for 500.”
Five hundred civilians, allegedly placed at risk in order to attack one target.
And, as with so much else in the film, there is no evidence corroborating that it ever happened.
24 Sources. But How Many for Each Claim?
Anonymous sources are not inherently unreliable.
Journalists routinely protect confidential sources, particularly inside military and intelligence organizations. Someone discussing sensitive targeting procedures may have entirely legitimate reasons not to appear under his or her own name.
The Guardian says “NAZA” is based on verified confidential testimony gathered through more than three years of investigative work.
Fine.
But “we verified our sources” is not the same thing as giving viewers enough information to judge what those sources actually knew.
Was the person describing a targeting rule actually responsible for applying it? Did he personally see the authorization being discussed? Did they design the system, operate it, review its outputs or simply work elsewhere inside the intelligence apparatus?
When an interviewee makes pronouncements about Israeli “strategy,” was that strategy something he knew because he participated in senior-level decision-making, or his own interpretation based on one narrow window into a vast military operation?
And when another interviewee declares the war a “genocide,” is he revealing evidence of governmental intent or simply offering his personal political judgment?
There is also a sleight of hand in the number 24 itself.
It sounds sounds weighty – more than enough to suggest extensive corroboration. But 24 people appearing in the same documentary does not mean 24 independent sources corroborated every allegation within it.
How many independently attest to the “20 NAZA” benchmark? How many worked directly with Lavender? How many saw the same targeting authorization?
And, most importantly, how many can independently corroborate the claim that an attack involving an anticipated 500 civilian casualties was actually approved?
From everything made public so far, that last allegation appears to rest on the word of one concealed interviewee.
The IDF has categorically rejected the film’s allegations, noting that some of the claims attributed to anonymous military personnel concern national and military strategy far beyond what soldiers in the roles described would ordinarily be in a position to know. It also points out that several interviewees pronounce on legal questions despite having no apparent legal role or expertise.
From Venice to The Hague
There is one final twist to consider.
The very legal standard that should make “NAZA’s” leap to genocide so difficult is itself now under pressure.
The International Court of Justice has long held that where genocidal intent is inferred from a pattern of conduct rather than directly proved, it must be the only reasonable inference available from the acts in question.
That is an awkward test for the Gaza allegation. Israel’s war aim was the defeat of Hamas, while the very procedures described in “NAZA” distinguish military targets from surrounding civilians and calculate the risk to the latter. Whatever criticism might be made of particular strikes, that is plainly an alternative explanation for the conduct being described.
But the test is now being contested.
In the pending genocide case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, intervening states have urged the ICJ to interpret the “only reasonable inference” standard less rigidly, including by recognizing that genocidal intent could coexist with other objectives. Myanmar, meanwhile, has warned that if even one other reasonable inference exists, genocidal intent cannot be inferred from a pattern of conduct under the Court’s existing jurisprudence.
Obviously, the implications stretch further than Myanmar.
A Wall Street Journal analysis published this week argued that a looser interpretation could dramatically lower the threshold for proving genocide and reverberate directly into South Africa’s case against Israel.
There is an extraordinary overlap here, too.
Navi Pillay was chosen by The Gambia to sit as its judge ad hoc in the Myanmar case. She also chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry that last year declared Israel responsible for genocide in Gaza.
Indeed, that Commission purported to apply the existing “only reasonable inference” test and nevertheless concluded that genocidal intent was the only reasonable explanation for Israel’s conduct. Israel categorically rejected the finding.
This is where the legal and cultural campaigns begin to reinforce one another.
Films such as “NAZA” turn contested allegations into an emotionally compelling story of a system deliberately killing civilians. Reviews translate that story into the language of “genocide.” International bodies increasingly repeat the conclusion. Meanwhile, lawyers are pressing the world’s highest court to interpret the legal test governing genocidal intent more expansively.
The legal bar is under pressure while the cultural certainty only grows.
Venice supplied an almost comically perfect illustration.
Last year, “The Voice of Hind Rajab” received a standing ovation lasting 23 minutes and 50 seconds – then reported as the longest in film-festival history.
Then came “NAZA.”
Around 24 and a half minutes.
Just long enough to beat the previous Gaza film.
And the footage is quite something.
Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera can be seen applauding while repeatedly checking his watch as the ovation drags on. Once the previous record has been passed, congratulations follow and the marathon applause winds down.
Perhaps everyone in the room really was moved by “NAZA” for precisely half a minute longer than they had been moved the previous year.
Or perhaps the stopwatch gives away something rather more cynical: the applause had become part of the production itself, another way to build the product and, with it, the wider case against Israel.
Another signal that this was not merely a documentary to be assessed, but a moral event to which the correct response was already understood.
And when the film in front of you has been hailed as an exposé of genocide, who exactly wants to be the first person to stop clapping?
That is how the wider “NAZA” phenomenon works.
An allegation moves rapidly from anonymous testimony to cultural consensus, acquiring prestige and apparent authority at every stage. And if the legal threshold for proving genocidal intent is ultimately loosened, what began as a contested accusation will arrive at The Hague already carrying the weight of an established truth.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
