{"id":614764,"date":"2026-09-13T11:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T11:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/614764\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T11:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T11:48:11","slug":"inside-naza-the-bombshell-expose-on-idfs-war-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/614764\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside NAZA the Bombshell Expose on IDF’s War in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNAZA<\/a>, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival Saturday night<\/a>, is already one of the most shocking and controversial documentaries<\/a> of the year. It may also prove to be one of the most indispensable.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe expos\u00e9, from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. The film\u2019s title, NAZA<\/a>, comes from an acronym the Israeli military uses as a shorthand for civilian casualties.<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham and Szor, part of the director collective behind the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land,<\/a> which documented the destruction of a village in the occupied West Bank by Israeli soldiers and settlers, shot NAZA clandestinely over three years, doing the interviews under the cover of night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv. The duo used VFX to alter the voices and faces of the officers.<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir allegations and revelations are harrowing. One describes hacking into the phone of a 12-year-old girl to identify when her father, a target, comes home, and ordering the bombing that kills the whole family. Another describes how snipers gun down Palestinian civilians as they desperately scramble to reach a food distribution site.<\/p>\n

\n\tNAZA was enthusiastically received in Venice with a 25-minute standing ovation, an all-time record. Jonathan Glazer, the Oscar-winning director of The Zone of Interest, executive produced the film. Mk2 Films is handling worldwide sales.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it \u201ccategorically rejects\u201d the film\u2019s allegations and criticized the use of anonymous testimonies, which it said \u201ccannot be verified.\u201d It repeated claims that \u201cthe IDF strikes military targets and makes unprecedented efforts to minimize harm to civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham and Szor spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on the making of the film, fighting the \u201ccomplicity of silence\u201d and whether their film can bring about real-world change. \u201cBecause this is not something of the past. It\u2019s still ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film builds on investigative work you did with The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call between 2023 and 2025. How did that collaboration come about?<\/p>\n

\n\tYuval Abraham: The film is built on investigative work that I\u2019ve done together with colleagues at The Guardian, like Harry Davies and Emma Graham-Harrison and others, who \u2014 we\u2019ve been looking at the way the Israeli targeting systems work, Israeli mass surveillance over Palestinians, and how mass killing works. And me and Rachel, of course, we worked on No Other Land together with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, and we realized that we wanted to make a film that is in this intersection between cinema and journalism. I think a film allows us to examine the system, the systemic nature of the killing in Gaza \u2014 and we knew that we wanted to have a very rigorous process of journalism, of fact-checking, of scrutinizing the work that we were doing, and The Guardian and The Guardian\u2018s investigations desk were very valuable in that sense, to partner with us on this.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you find these 24 officers who speak to you so openly in the documentary, and how did you convince them to speak?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: It was a process. It took months, and in some instances years, to find people and to speak with them. For some of them, it took a long time until they decided to agree to speak in front of a camera. I think people were aware that what they are exposing is quite damning information on the Israeli state crimes that were perpetrated in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd if you think about the fact that Israel, to this day, is not letting international<\/a> journalists enter Gaza to witness what human rights organizations across the world are calling a genocide \u2014 much of the burden is placed on Palestinian journalists, who have been killed. You know, 200 of them have been killed. So I think it\u2019s obviously for this reason that people were afraid, because it\u2019s clear that the Israeli government is trying to block these attempts at accountability, whether it\u2019s through assassinating and killing Palestinian journalists or through other means, by preventing international journalists from coming in.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo it was a challenge, but ultimately, when you\u2019re an investigative journalist, you build a network of sources. You move from one person to the next. You have to be patient sometimes and let people make up their own minds. It was important for us that the people participating give their informed consent, and we knew that we would have to rely on a large group of sources \u2014 because this film is making quite heavy claims about how Israel\u2019s system of targeting works, about the fact that attacking civilian spaces, family homes, is something that is built into the system by design. It\u2019s looking for targets when they come back to their homes.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018NAZA\u2019 directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBarol\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that there were protocols that soldiers operated by, of shooting and killing anybody they saw on the ground in large areas, including women and children \u2014 I don\u2019t know if this was a written protocol, but many, many soldiers said that this was the logic they were operating by. So to credibly make those claims in a documentary, we knew we would need many sources. So this is why we also had to get two dozen of them for this film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe other thing that I would want to add is that I think these policies, and the truth of these policies, should have been evident without relying on Israeli soldiers. Palestinians have been documenting this on the ground from the very first day. You don\u2019t have to be a genius to realize that when children come into hospitals with sniper wounds, and Palestinians are documenting it, that they\u2019re being intentionally shot by soldiers. Between May and late October 2025, Palestinians were documenting massacre after massacre happening at the food sites, the GHF sites \u2014 you didn\u2019t have to wait for the soldiers who appear in our film, describing how they would see snipers shooting at unarmed civilians running toward food in front of the camera, to know that this is true.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat truth should have been evident from the very start, and I think, because so many people \u2014 especially Israelis, and people in the United States and in Germany and other places \u2014 are still denying those crimes, and because the denial of those crimes allows them to persist, we felt it was important to also bring insider testimony from the people who design those systems, from the people who operated those systems. Because it\u2019s ongoing. It\u2019s not something of the past. It\u2019s something that\u2019s very much rooted in the present, and we hope will not continue more and more into the future.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat did the people who agreed to speak with you say were their reasons for doing so?<\/p>\n

\n\tRachel Szor: In the film there are 24 different people speaking, so there\u2019s a range of reasons why people want to speak. We also talked about it between ourselves: what is their motive to come to us? The film touches on it a bit. There are some people that perhaps feel some sort of responsibility, and they also wanted to speak about it in Hebrew so that more Israelis will hear about it. Some people in the film, you see, feel some sort of pride [in what they did]. We don\u2019t really know what the psychological reasons are. I feel that perhaps it\u2019s also because not many people are asking these questions. In Israel, in the mainstream media, no one really talks about it. There are a few journalists who investigate those things, but no one really gives those soldiers the stage. It\u2019s really like a secret topic, especially the intelligence around it, no one really talks about it. So it was kind of the first time they could speak about it was when they spoke about it with Yuval. The film is less about trying to solve the question of why they spoke out, or how Yuval got to them; it\u2019s really more about them describing the systems they use for the mass killing.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L to R): Jonathan Glazer, Rachel Szor, Yuval Abraham and producer James Wilson attend the \u201cNAZA\u201d photocall at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAurore Marechal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did Jonathan Glazer get involved in this project as an executive producer?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: We met Jonathan for the first time with No Other Land. He hosted a Q&A, and we connected afterward. We were really influenced by The Zone of Interest. I remember hearing Jonathan say that in that film, the victims were out of sight, but they were never out of mind for a second. That really, I think, informed how we were thinking of the cinematic language and the way we structured NAZA \u2014 the fact that we are looking at an Israeli city, Tel Aviv, we are looking at Israelis involved in mass killings, and the victims, for most of the film, are out of sight. But they\u2019re never out of mind, in the sense that the reason for being of this film is the crimes committed against the Palestinians in Gaza. This was our motivation, and this is also what we were interested in exploring \u2014 how those systems look, and what allows people to participate in them.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve both been investigating these types of crimes for some time, in different forms, including with your last film. Was there anything surprising or shocking for you that came out of these interviews and this investigation?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: I\u2019m not sure if it was surprising, again, because the truth of what is happening in Gaza could have been evident, and should have been evident, from the start. If you listen to the openly genocidal statements of Israeli ministers, senior figures in the government, senior military officials \u2014 I mean, just recently, our defense minister, Israel Katz, said that the only solution for Gaza is migration, and the government is ready to do it by air, by land, or by sea, in any way possible. This kind of rhetoric makes clear that the intent is the removal of Palestinians, and the dehumanization has been on the table.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt could have been clear from the start, if people listened to Palestinians, to civilians in Gaza, to journalists who have been documenting it. So I can\u2019t say there was a surprise at the revelations in the film. I think what was striking was hearing how much these tools are already built on a logic that is extremely deadly for civilians.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe look at one kind of protocol of operation, a tool called Where\u2019s Daddy, which is a system that, by spying on family members of people the Israeli military wants to kill, waits until a family member says the person is home, and the system is built on bombing those individuals when they are in their family homes, when they are sleeping, at night. What was really striking about this to me is that you so often hear the way the international media and the Israeli media frame this killing as \u2018okay, we are bombing them because Hamas is using them as human shields.\u2019 You imagine that Hamas is firing rockets out of those civilian houses, and this is why they are bombed. And we have soldiers in our film saying Hamas uses human shields in some cases, but the majority of the killing \u2014 this mass slaughter of civilians inside their homes \u2014 is not because the homes are used as human shields. It\u2019s because this is how the Israeli targeting system is built. It\u2019s because the goal \u2014 a genocidal goal, in my mind, from the start \u2014 was to destroy these so-called targets, with AI involved in selecting those targets, and that civilian spaces are routinely bombed by design.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese are practices and methods that existed already before the massacre of October 7, but afterward they were applied and pushed to such an extreme that the inevitable, pre-calculated, premeditated results are, as we know, that more than 2,900 families in Gaza, multiple generations, were just completely erased, all the members of the family murdered. This was part of the logic of how the Israeli system operated.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was it like, personally, to conduct these interviews with people admitting to war crimes?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: Yeah, it\u2019s a challenge, because I know that as an interviewer, you don\u2019t really need to push the person talking in order to get to the truth. All you have to ask, really, once the person is sitting in front of you, is: describe to me what you did, how did systems work? Because the truth of what happened in Gaza is so horrible, just asking is sometimes enough.<\/p>\n

\n\tI actually think you need to use quite a lot of manipulation if you want to obscure that truth, if you want to reframe it in a way where it is not clear \u2014 that is the difficult task. The film is based on more than 100 hours of interview material, and every story or claim that is made in the film is something that we heard again and again, from multiple people and multiple sources. I felt it was important to interview them in that way so that the audience feels this film is as factual, as objective as possible, because it is also some kind of document. Of course, we have our personal opinions. We\u2019ve made them clear. But I know that the people I want to reach, the people who need to change, the people whose silence or complicity is allowing the crimes to persist, are maybe people who don\u2019t agree with my conclusions.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are Israeli elections coming up \u2014 do you expect this film and its revelations to affect the debate, or even the result of the elections?<\/p>\n

\n\tSzor: Yeah, we really don\u2019t know. Of course, we hope that it will be shown in Israel and will have as much influence as possible. But unfortunately, in this election, what\u2019s happening in Gaza \u2014 still ongoing every week \u2014 and what\u2019s happening in the West Bank is just not a topic, an issue, in the elections. So it\u2019s a big question for us as well, how the film will be received in Israel. But we hope that the fact that it\u2019s soldiers from the system speaking in Hebrew will perhaps have some sort of influence.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018No Other Land\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Sheffield DocFest<\/p>\n

\n\tWill it be released in Israel? Do you have a distributor there?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: We don\u2019t have a distributor yet, but it\u2019s definitely our intention to release it as widely as possible in Israel, and in the United States, and in Germany. As I said, I think it\u2019s our responsibility \u2014 we are Israelis, we come from that society, and we are citizens of the country that is committing these grave crimes, and we want to confront that, and show and share this with people from the place we come from, and also around the world. We will try. We can\u2019t know if there will be mainstream platforms in Israel, but we want to take this film there. I think it\u2019s definitely important for us, because I feel it\u2019s our responsibility to do this work.<\/p>\n

\n\tYour last film No Other Land had difficulty getting distributed in the U.S. and other territories. Do you expect similar resistance from mainstream distributors with this film?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: I don\u2019t know \u2014 it\u2019s kind of too early to tell. My gut tells me, and I hope I\u2019m wrong on this, that it will be just as difficult. I know there are important public opinion changes in the United States. I think there will be a big audience for this film, especially in the United States, since the killing was carried out with weapons that were created in the U.S., funded by U.S. taxpayer money \u2014 $21.7 billion worth of arms and equipment sent to Israel since October 7, which is still being carried out. Just this week, a seven-year-old girl in Gaza was killed with her father in her car. This is all being done thanks to the support of the United States, and the refusal of consecutive U.S. governments to condition or suspend completely the arms they send to Israel. So it\u2019s so important for us that people in the United States really listen to the Israeli officers and soldiers describing how their weapons were used. And I hope there will be a mainstream distributor that takes this film and carries it into the United States. I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s going to happen, but I hope it will.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore generally, what level of risk is there \u2014 for you, and for the people who participated in this film \u2014 of being prosecuted or targeted by the Israeli government because of these revelations?<\/p>\n

\n\tAbraham: There is someone in the film who says they want to hide their identity because they are afraid of retaliation and imprisonment by the Israeli government. Israel\u2019s government is a far-right government, and we know that they are not letting international journalists into Gaza, and they\u2019ve killed so many Palestinian journalists there. So it\u2019s clear there is an intent to obscure or hide the truth, and there\u2019s something about that truth appearing through the voices of people inside that system that I\u2019m guessing the state will be very unhappy about, and will try to block from coming out. But at the same time, I can speak for myself and Rachel \u2014 I think there is nothing wrong in what we are doing. I think it\u2019s what we should be doing as journalists, and what we should be doing as humans, and as citizens of a country that is committing such crimes. So I hope that we will not have to pay a certain kind of price for it.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L to R): The directors of \u2018No Other Land\u2019: Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, and Yuval Abraham <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMike Coppola\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven the backlash you faced after your last film, and given that Gaza and the occupied territories aren\u2019t playing a major role in this election, does that discourage you?<\/p>\n

\n\tRachel Szor: I think the question is less about the backlash and more about the impact. With No Other Land, we won the Oscar, as a collective, and it\u2019s the biggest award you can get, and we felt so many people watched it \u2014 but still, this week, two villages were destroyed in a-Safai al-Tahta, and that\u2019s exactly what the film was about \u2014 this policy of removing and destroying the houses of Palestinians in that area \u2014 and it\u2019s still happening. So, in a way, you ask yourself what kind of impact it can have. But so many people, greater than us, are doing things, and you\u2019re never sure what impact it will have. We have this privilege as Israelis to bring these testimonies in the film. It was less a question of whether we despair or not and more the feeling that we have to do it.<\/p>\n

\n\tYuval Abraham: I think Rachel and I think realize we are operating in a system of Jewish-Israeli supremacy and privilege. When our Palestinian journalist colleagues in Gaza are really paying with their lives \u2014 so many have been killed and murdered by Israel for documenting what is happening around them \u2014 to me, it\u2019s clear that there is an importance to documentation. In our film, No Other Land, Basel is still continuing to document what was happening to his community. He says that change can sometimes be like water dropping \u2014 drop after drop after drop \u2014 and eventually there will be a change. We hope so. For me, I think a lot of this change has to start with a change in U.S. foreign policy, and I hope that the film can contribute to that somehow.<\/p>\n

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