They do not say “civilians.” They don’t call them “victims,” or “people,” or “innocents” — in the words of one soldier, “After October 7th, there are no innocent people in Gaza.” The term used to describe the collateral damage that occurs when Israeli
forces issue a military strike against a suspected terrorist is “NAZA” (an abbreviation of the Hebrew phrase nezek agavi). If a drone attack hits a building where a potential Hamas operative lives, it may result in four NAZA. Or 12 NAZA. Or, in one case, 500 NAZA. Those in charge of that particular bombing knew the collateral damage would be in the hundreds. They signed off anyway. The soldiers, like so many before them and so many after them in conflicts around the world, were just following orders.
It’s easy to understand why Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the documentarians behind NAZA, would choose this word as the title of their film. It’s also easy to see why this particular movie has attracted an extraordinary amount of controversy even as its received extended standing ovations at film festivals. A series of late-night interviews with 24 IDF operatives — their identities left anonymous, their voices changed, their faces not just shadowed but digitally altered — conducted on rooftops in Tel Aviv, this peek inside the machinery of ongoing war has been accused of being a masterpiece, propaganda, the “most important” thing you’ll see all year and, with regard to the two Israeli filmmakers responsible for it, treasonous enough to possibly have their citizenship revoked. What it feels like when you’re watching it is an indictment. There are things I can’t talk about, one interviewee reluctantly notes, suggesting there are true horrors that can’t be spoken of aloud. What is said during these conversations is still enough to make you scream and weep.
The events of October 7th are not neglected here, nor are they whitewashed away — the day is treated exactly like what it was, a massacre and a tragedy and an atrocity. The majority of these interviews focus on what the nation’s military policies have been as a result, and how the use of remotely controlled drone strikes and an AI program dubbed Lavender have resulted in casualties the film puts at 73,000 (and counting) in Gaza. “There are two simultaneous realities,” one of the participants says, “one visible, one invisible.” The visible is glimpsed from a distance in the interspersed wide shots that separate the testimonials, in which everyday people are seen watching news reports and lounging about their living rooms of tall apartment buildings against the Tel Aviv skyline. The invisible is happening “over there,” far away but so close, as a software program “decides who lives and who dies,” buttons are pushed, and entire neighborhoods are decimated before drone operators go out to lunch.
These are a few of the details that come out, as the anonymous Israelis who unburden themselves — or, if they don’t admit to having remorse regarding their role in the conflict, at least openly confess to — describe the systematic targeting of the region. Surveillance of Gaza is total. Every building has a serial number, so attacks can be specified, i.e. Building 6327, Floor Seven, even as the resulting damage spreads across the entire block. What was once a city is now “a factory of targets,” one soldier says. A 12-year-old girl’s phone is hacked so a target can be located. Teams responsible for identifying suspects who have returned to their homes listen for the phrase “Daddy’s home” — and then issue strikes. Zones are set up, yet the parameters are not defined. Those who enter unknowingly are shot. A sniper picks off people attempting to cross a bridge and get food. “The general atmosphere is hate,” one soldier declares. “The goal is to destroy.”
Some have taken NAZA to task for not backing up these claims with evidence, yet a title card near the end notes that similar allegations have been previously reported in the Guardian (which is co-sponsoring the film’s release and will allow it to be seen free at its site later this year) and other publications over the past few years. The information has been offered up. It just has not been presented in such a formalistic way, or heard (digitally tweaked or otherwise) from the mouths of the alleged perpetrators. That Abraham and Szor — two members of the four-person filmmaking team that made the 2024 Oscar-winning doc No Other Land — stick to an almost anodyne format of interviews and the occasional Tel Aviv cityscape doesn’t diffuse the descriptions; if anything, it brings all of these horrors into stark relief.
There are two notable breaks from this template. One is an archival clip of a writer on a talk show in the mid-1980s, who’s just published a book on terrorism. In it, he defines terrorism as “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.” The author is Benjamin Netanyahu. The clip has been recirculated online as of late. It’s presented here near the end of the film without additional comment.
The second is that, after NAZA has spent the bulk of its running time allowing former and current IDF soldiers the chance to describe the operations they’ve been part of, the film displays footage of the aftermath of one. A series of legs are sticking out from the rubble of a collapsed building. Men frantically try to see if there are any survivors. A father sobs. It’s the only moment in which the movie’s “tell, don’t show” mode is reversed. You’ve spent close to 80 minutes as a listener. But before you leave the theater or shut off your laptop, it’s asking you to be a witness.
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