{"id":627526,"date":"2026-09-25T22:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T22:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/627526\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T22:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T22:46:09","slug":"in-naza-israeli-whistleblowers-revelations-about-civilian-deaths-in-gaza-reflect-a-longer-history-of-palestinian-isolation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/627526\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018NAZA,\u2019 Israeli whistleblowers\u2019 revelations about civilian deaths in Gaza reflect a longer history of Palestinian isolation"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a powerful scene in Moroccan-French-Israeli filmmaker Simone Bitton\u2019s 2004 documentary \u201cWall<\/a>,\u201d which tells the story of the construction of the West Bank barrier<\/a>, a 448-mile \u2013 or 721-kilometer \u2013 network of walls and fences dividing large parts of the West Bank from Israel.<\/p>\n

A concrete slab is slowly lowered into place in order to complete a section of the wall. Inch by inch, the vibrant, hilly Palestinian community on the other side gets smaller and smaller. <\/p>\n

And then \u2013 just like that \u2013 a world that\u2019s a stone\u2019s throw away is gone. <\/p>\n

As someone<\/a> who studies<\/a> the restrictions placed on Palestinians, I often think about this scene as a microcosm of Israel\u2019s decades-long use of walls, checkpoints and surveillance technologies to seal off Palestinians from the rest of society.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A still from the 2004 documentary \u2018Wall\u2019 depicts the moment that a section of the West Bank barrier is completed.
\n Down The Rabbit Hole\/YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n

Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than the Gaza Strip, which Israel fenced in during the 1990s<\/a> and has blockaded since 2007<\/a>, citing security concerns and the threat of militant attacks.<\/p>\n

Thanks to these barriers, the immense suffering of Palestinians in Gaza \u2013 more than 70,000<\/a> of whom have been killed as a result of the Israel-Hamas war since 2023 \u2013 has been difficult to document. The Israeli government largely bars international journalists from entering the Gaza Strip independently, while Palestinians in Gaza are generally not allowed to leave the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n

But the Sept. 10, 2026, premiere of Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor\u2019s film \u201cNAZA<\/a>\u201d at the Venice International Film Festival has put the spotlight on the ongoing tragedy in Gaza without relying on footage of gruesome corpses or bombed-out neighborhoods. <\/p>\n

The film consists largely of anonymous testimony from 24 members of Israel\u2019s military and intelligence services. They discuss the ways in which Israel has used artificial intelligence<\/a> to target Hamas officials, despite knowing the attacks will also generate large numbers of civilian casualties. The title, \u201cNAZA,\u201d comes from an acronym for the Hebrew phrase \u201cnezek agavi,\u201d or \u201ccollateral damage,\u201d and it\u2019s the Israeli military\u2019s threshold system for how many civilian casualties are acceptable in its military strikes on Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks<\/a>. Hamas-led militants from Gaza launched those attacks in southern Israel, murdering 1,200 people \u2013 mostly civilians \u2013 and also taking about 250 hostages.<\/p>\n

To me, part of the film\u2019s power lies in its focus on the clinical way of carrying out strikes on Gaza from a distance. But the Israeli military\u2019s approach could only work after systematically isolating the Palestinian people over the course of decades.<\/p>\n

Unseen victims<\/p>\n

In addition to constructing walls and blockading Gaza, Israel has enforced separation of Palestinians by restricting or denying permits<\/a> to Palestinians wishing to enter or work in Israel through aerial surveillance<\/a> and through the expansion<\/a> of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. <\/p>\n

Both the visual language and the content of \u201cNAZA\u201d reflect and reveal how knowledge of Palestinian suffering is often mitigated in Israeli culture, politics and daily life. <\/p>\n

The film juxtaposes audio of Israeli soldiers\u2019 testimony with shots of the Tel Aviv cityscape at night. In these interviews, the soldiers map out how targets are chosen, how attacks are planned and how much leeway is given for civilian casualties. <\/p>\n

The victims themselves are largely unseen, despite their close proximity: Tel Aviv sits a mere 43 miles \u2013 or 70 kilometers \u2013 up the coast from the Gaza Strip. <\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/p>\n

Gaza City, shown on Sept. 21, 2026, is just 43 miles from Tel Aviv, yet the two can seem worlds apart.
\n Faiz Qreqa\/Middle East Images\/AFP via Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

The choice to film primarily at night, in darkness, using disembodied voices to tell a story not depicted on camera, further highlights the extent to which these events have been obscured in Israel and around the world. Perhaps that\u2019s why the Israeli government has gone to such great lengths to discredit the film, saying it contains \u201cdeliberate distortions of reality<\/a>.\u201d Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to revoke the citizenship of its directors<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In response to the interest and backlash surrounding the film, the filmmakers announced<\/a> that \u201cNAZA\u201d will be available to stream for free, for anyone to see, beginning in November 2026.<\/p>\n

Breaking through<\/p>\n

\u201cNAZA\u201d highlights a psychological distance between attacker and attacked that was enabled by AI, computer screens and the physical isolation of the targets. Yet it is far from the first film to call attention to the invisibility of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Elia Suleiman\u2019s 2002 dark comedy \u201cDivine Intervention<\/a>\u201d repeatedly stages scenes in which Palestinian characters are stuck at or try to get around an Israeli military checkpoint. And Yoav Shamir\u2019s 2003 documentary \u201cCheckpoint<\/a>\u201d chronicles everyday interactions between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. <\/p>\n

Other films center on acts of transgression or protest. Hany Abu-Assad\u2019s 2013 drama \u201cOmar<\/a>\u201d and Ameen Nayfeh\u2019s 2020 drama \u201c200 Meters<\/a>\u201d both feature Palestinian characters who break the law and surreptitiously cross the West Bank border into Israeli territory, exposing themselves to physical and legal danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Other Land<\/a>\u201d \u2013 the 2024 documentary that netted Abraham and Szor an Oscar<\/a>, along with fellow directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal \u2013 points the camera on Palestinian protest movements against land expropriations and home demolitions in the West Bank. In the 2011 film \u201c5 Broken Cameras<\/a>,\u201d Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat captures his West Bank village\u2019s struggle against the construction of a massive wall that chokes off farmland and access to vital resources. Even as his cameras are repeatedly damaged or destroyed, Burnat refuses to stop documenting the resistance.<\/p>\n

\u2018NAZA\u2019 will be available to stream for free starting in November 2026.<\/p>\n

Crying while shooting<\/p>\n

\u201cNAZA\u201d also points to another phenomenon: how isolation and separation encourage complicity. The physical distance between Israeli soldiers and the people they target may make it easier to go along with or ignore what is happening.<\/p>\n

In this way, \u201cNAZA\u201d grapples with a trope in Israeli films and literature of exploring the guilt of Israeli soldiers. Sometimes derisively referred to by critics as \u201cshooting and crying<\/a>,\u201d the thematic framework of these films has been criticized for focusing on Israeli moral anguish at the expense of Palestinian experiences and perspectives.<\/p>\n

For example, S. Yizhar\u2019s 1949 novel, \u201cKhirbet Khizeh,\u201d which was adapted into a film<\/a> in 1978, tells the story from the perspective of Micha, an Israeli soldier fighting in the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. He\u2019s part of a squad that expels Palestinians from their village, and his ensuing guilt provokes a crisis of conscience that haunts him for years to come. <\/p>\n

Decades later, the 2008 animated documentary \u201cWaltz With Bashir<\/a>\u201d follows the film\u2019s director, Ari Folman, as he plumbs his repressed memories of his participation in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut<\/a> and how he inadvertently helped Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia fighters carry out massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Waltz With Bashir\u2019 centered on the fragmented memories, trauma and guilt of an Israeli soldier who had helped facilitate the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1982.<\/p>\n

The \u201cshooting and crying\u201d genre was largely accepted in mainstream Israeli culture, with \u201cKhirbet Khizeh\u201d taught in Israeli schools<\/a> for decades. But the Israeli government\u2019s hostile reaction to \u201cNAZA\u201d perhaps signals not only the growing intolerance of dissent in Israel, but also a fading cultural and political concern<\/a> with the morality of Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

Whose voices get heard<\/p>\n

The centering of Israeli perspectives in these earlier works \u2013 as well as in \u201cNAZA\u201d \u2013 also shows how violence against Palestinians can be given greater credence when it\u2019s described by Israelis themselves. <\/p>\n

Recent Palestinian narratives about Gaza, such as \u201cFrom Ground Zero<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThirteen in Gaza<\/a>,\u201d have garnered some attention and praise<\/a> in the film world<\/a>, but nowhere near the same amount as \u201cNAZA\u201d has in the weeks since its premiere.<\/p>\n

Even \u201cNo Other Land,\u201d which is centered on a Palestinian village, features an Israeli journalist and filmmaker, Abraham, documenting the protests and confronting Israeli soldiers, and may not have received the same acclaim if it had been made entirely by Palestinians. <\/p>\n

Yet, despite these many barriers, Palestinians have never stopped finding ways to make themselves heard. In addition to films like \u201cOmar\u201d and \u201c200 Meters,\u201d videos and images shared directly to social media<\/a> have allowed Palestinians to connect directly with audiences and shape global awareness of their plight, especially since the current war in Gaza began. <\/p>\n

They have been able to bypass the physical barriers that have long restricted their movement \u2013 and the cultural barriers that have often kept their experiences out of sight.<\/p>\n

NBC News covers \u2018NAZA\u2019 ahead of its premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 26, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a powerful scene in Moroccan-French-Israeli filmmaker Simone Bitton\u2019s 2004 documentary \u201cWall,\u201d which tells the story of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-627526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}