25 Minutes of Shame: What Venice’s Standing Ovation for ‘NAZA’ Got So Wrong

I watched a room full of people in Venice give a twenty-five-minute standing ovation to two Israeli filmmakers for their documentary “NAZA.” I can no longer stay silent.

I am a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. I have served in Lebanon, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria. I was a combat medic in a front-line unit during my compulsory service, and I have spent hundreds of days on the front lines with my PALMAR medical extraction unit since Hamas’s October 7th massacre, an atrocity “NAZA” does not mention.

In all my years of training, operations, and reserve duty, I never received an illegal order. I never took part in any action that deliberately harmed civilians. Every briefing before every mission, large or small, stressed the values of the IDF. I am proud of my service and of those who served beside me, the best of our people.

I am proud, too, of Israel’s open democracy, which makes room for criticism of the state and its army. But that criticism must be honest. It means bringing evidence to the IDF’s investigative bodies, which examine every credible allegation of wrongdoing, not laundering anonymous, unverified claims through a film funded in part by organisations that deny Israel’s right to exist.

That is what “NAZA” does. Its claims are anonymous, unsourced, and were never submitted to the IDF for investigation. Instead, they were packaged for foreign audiences and enemies of Israel, with no cooperation from the military the filmmakers accuse.

I recently heard an interview with an Israeli Air Force pilot who aborted mission after mission against the same target in Gaza. Asked if that was frustrating, he said it was the opposite, the best thing about his air force is that it will not let him strike where civilians might be harmed, because he could not live with himself otherwise. That instinct, not harming civilians, was always foremost in my mind too.

Colonel Richard Kemp, the former British commander of forces in Afghanistan, has said Israel’s army has taken greater precautions to protect civilians than any army in the history of warfare. An army bent on killing a population does not warn it first. Israel drops leaflets, makes phone calls, and publishes evacuation maps before it strikes, then sends its own soldiers on foot to clear buildings rather than flattening them from the air, at a cost of hundreds of IDF lives. That is the army I know. It is not the army in this film.

The people who killed civilians with intent on October 7th were Hamas and the mobs who followed them into Israeli homes and a music festival, murdering, raping, and torturing 1,200 people, and dragging 250 hostages, including babies, back into Gaza to cheering crowds. That footage, filmed gleefully by the perpetrators themselves, appears nowhere in “NAZA.”
The film’s image of the IDF is the inverse of its reality, crafted by two filmmakers whose work delights Israel’s enemies. At minimum, their citizenship should be reconsidered. And it bears remembering had they been in Hamas’s path on October 7th, their self-hatred would not have spared them.

–

Dr. Tuvia Book currently serving on IDF reserve duty.  He is the author of  Heroes of Palmar: How one IDF Unit Revolutionized Combat Medicine in Gaza.  It is published by Gefen Publishing House and is available either from gefen.com or Amazon.com.  He also authored  “For the Sake of Zion, A Curriculum of Israel Education” and “Jewish Journeys” books on both the First Temple and Second Temple periods (Koren).  In addition, Tuvia is a much sought after public speaker and is a Ministry of Tourism licensed Tour Guide, Jewish educator and a Judaica artist. www.booktuvia.com.