NAZA and the Reality Outside the Frame
“So much is being done to…as to not look at reality,” Yuval Abraham said in Venice. His words provide a useful starting point for examining the public claims surrounding NAZA, the documentary he directed with Rachel Szor, which won the festival’s Special Jury Prize.
Looking at reality requires distinguishing what is documented, what is alleged and what remains unresolved. That applies to the film’s claims, the military’s responses and the wider account of the war. An award is not a verdict.
The film’s Venice synopsis describes “Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” This is an allegation about intention and policy, not simply a statement that civilians have suffered, and indeed citizens do suffer in every conflict – that is the nature of conflicts and wars- but its accuracy therefore depends on evidence connecting particular incidents, operational decisions and the broader conclusions being drawn.
One reported allegation concerns a planned strike in which 500 civilian deaths were “allowed,” and I wonder what size a bomb needs to be to have a collateral damage death toll of 500. Also, the one stating this claim was an anonymous figure in the shadows; who knows who that might be. Abraham says the sources’ identities and the cases they described were verified, but I wonder by whom? What records corroborate the testimony? What did witnesses observe directly? Was an operation discussed, authorized, rejected or carried out? Does evidence about one decision establish a wider policy? Protecting confidential sources and explaining verification methods are separate tasks. In addition, when discussing “collateral damage,” anticipating civilian deaths does not, by itself, establish that killing civilians was an attack’s purpose. In this conflict, there are those who do target civilians, though.
Hamas’s conduct belongs in that examination, too. Human Rights Watch’s July 2024 investigation concluded that killing civilians and taking hostages were central objectives of the planned October 7 assault, not just isolated acts or a plan that went wrong. Its findings concerned deliberate attacks on civilians, not simply civilians caught near military targets. So in that sense, the filmmakers are entirely correct – Israel has made some attacks that had collateral damage, while Hamas did not have any collateral damage at all! The entire campaign by Hamas targeted Israelis and Jews, regardless of whether they were civilians or not – this is what terror organizations always do.
Abraham says NAZA includes October 7 and the hostages, but the question for viewers is how the film integrates those subjects into its explanation, and whether its evidence supports its conclusions about Israeli decisions. How can a state defend itself? Perhaps Abraham has some strategic ideas to share with us all.
The filmmakers say many revelations originated in reporting by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call – all well-known anti-Zionist and biased outlets.
Then, who is not looking at reality? Israel, Hamas supporters? Looking at reality means keeping evidence, context, and responsibility in the same frame, even when they complicate the story an audience expects to hear. It seems then that Abraham and Rachel wanted to please their anti-Zionist audience more than reality itself.
