Why Netanyahu hates the most powerful film of the year

In Venice earlier this month, George Clooney was asked about Mark Ruffalo being attacked as an antisemite after criticizing Israel. He replied that Mark Ruffalo was a nice man who had a right to freedom of speech.

But Clooney didn’t mention Gaza. This is George Clooney of the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), which works to protect and free unjustly targeted journalists, but seemingly has nothing to say about the 200-plus Palestinian journalists killed since the start of Israel’s campaign against Gaza.  

In Venice, May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown took home the top prize of the Golden Lion, and that was fine. Her film was popular, and as supposedly the only woman director in the festival – a subject which came up in the first press conference – el-Toukhy deserved a certain focus. After all, Maggie Gyllenhaal, the president of the jury, had been the person asking the question in that press conference. 

Yet, for the second year running, the most politically important film, and frankly the best film of the festival, was given the runner-up prize. 

Last year, The Voice of Hind Rajab, the docudrama by Kaouther Ben Hania, was beaten to the Golden Lion by Jim Jarmusch’s minor dramedy Father Mother Sister Brother, much to Jarmusch’s own apparent surprise. This year actually felt worse.

NAZA is a documentary written and directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (whose role as a female co-director didn’t come up in the female representation discussion). Again, the subject is the killing of civilians in Gaza, with the title shorthand for nezek agavi, which in Hebrew means “collateral damage”.

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Using testimony from 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers whose identities are concealed and voices altered, Abraham and Rachel Szor present the “how” of genocide. How does a modern, functioning, democratic state with technology and education come to commit such acts? 

While around them ordinary Israelis are viewed through their apartment windows watching big-screen TVs, snacking or doing yoga, the officers are filmed sitting on rooftops in the dark. They explain how, in the aftermath of rage at the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas – and just to make sure the point is understood, I fully condemn and will forever be disgusted by that horrific attack – plans were laid to take revenge by annihilating, flattening, obliterating Gaza. 

Mobile phones were hacked, families surveilled, buildings targeted and an algorithm created to help with targeting before the bombing began. Officers studied building plans and devised ways to check if the targets were around. Civilian casualties – the NAZA of the title – were soon a negligible consideration, themselves becoming targets. 

“The goal was quantity, not quality,” says one of the interviewees, and “20 NAZA” is described as an acceptable benchmark – implying that one successful Hamas target could justify the killings of 20 civilians. The number soon escalates to 100 NAZA, 200 NAZA and on. 

Thus, mass murders and war crimes were perpetrated by intelligent people in elite squads who knew exactly what they were doing. These are not rogue massacres by trigger-happy soldiers. This is a complicated, thought-out strategy of intentional horror by people who then went on breaks to the local Starbucks.  

“It was insanely fun,” one of the intelligence officers says, with little remorse. Another compares the actions of his unit to the Nazis. The statements accrete into a rubble-strewn moonscape of death, state violence and murder.

Some of the officers interviewed are obviously emotionally disturbed and confessional. They’ve listened to the aftermath of the bombs. A girl on fire and still alive. Their drones have shown them the dogs eating the bodies of the children they killed.

Sometimes, the political reasons for choosing a certain film can overwhelm your more sober judgement. You’re tempted to think, “who gives a fuck about aesthetics?”

But there is no excuse for overlooking NAZA on this score. It is brilliantly formulated, edited and filmed, some of the reasons why it received a 25-minute standing ovation in Venice.

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The surveillance used in the film – mirroring the work of its subjects – feels like it’s partly coming from a science fiction film of another planet where mass murder can happen. People from one city can murder people in another city just 44 miles away and then go to the gym in the evening, or do their course in clinical psychology, or go out dancing. 

This insouciance is eerie when there’s nothing to show of a family but feet under a fallen concrete slab. But this is happening on our planet, and it’s still happening. 

NAZA has enraged the Israeli government and many of its extremist supporters. Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening Abraham and Szor with removal of their citizenships, and with legal action for defamation. Israeli Defence Force chief of staff Eyal Zamir says the film is “based on blood libels, deliberate distortions of reality, and grave, false accusations”. Far right protestors who gathered outside Szor’s home on September 17 called for the directors to be hanged.

More moderate voices, including at the left wing Haaretz newspaper, have questioned whether some allegations made by the officers can be verified, and whether their understanding of a chart showing ‘collateral damage’ of 500 NAZA in one assault might be skewed. A former IDF officer claims the chart shown describes the potential damage that might be inflicted by a reckless attack, and is used to reduce the chance of civilian harm. These criticisms have the sound of a child saying “I didn’t do it, and if I did do it I didn’t do it like that.” 

While some liberal commentators see the film as a long-overdue wake-up call to the Israeli public ahead of October’s general election, others fear the backlash might help get Netanyahu re-elected. But this is the worst sophistry. Don’t upset the genociders while they genocide. 

Some things are undeniable. As Abraham reminded us when he and Szor accepted their Special Jury Prize, during the course of the Venice Film Festival, six Palestinian children were killed by the Israeli government.