Reflections on Having Just Seen NAZA

Surprisingly, I don’t feel anything.  My wife, who saw it with me and tends to be angrier at Israel, said she felt sorry for the soldiers, who seemed to be confessing and even perhaps implicitly repenting.

Having read extensively about the film from many sides, and having followed the course of the war in and on Gaza on a daily basis, it was hard to be surprised at the film’s content.  My main reaction throughout was anger at the clear policy thread that runs through it,  and which explains why the war continued full blast until Trump “stopped” it the day before his inauguration, though it persists today at a reduced pace despite the nominal cease-fire.  That thread was the seemingly unquestioned assumption that every “Hamasnik” must die, though some have been captured, and a certain amount of collateral damage (NAZA) was considered unavoidable and even acceptable, since, given Israel’s surveillance, the easiest way to kill someone is when they are in their home, unfortunately surrounded by wife and children.

Still, the figures, horrendous as they are, show that the norm was not to kill 20 civilians for each Hamasnik.  The generally accepted statistic (yes, from the “Hamas-run” Gaza Health Ministry) is that 74,000+ Palestinians have been killed so far in Gaza, which is thought (by others) to include perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 Hamasnikim, (Hamas soldiers). Israel claims more but no one will ever know for certain.  And Israel will never kill all the Hamasnikim or “destroy Hamas,” a meaning­less phrase, since its numbers are back to where they were on October 7, 2023, swelled by new recruits with no other job prospects in Gaza and lots of reasons to hate Israel.

The war in Gaza, apparently still supported by most Israelis, was and is mostly an expression of anger and shame for being surprised and massacred, as well as raped and tortured by a force Israel thought was being successfully “managed.”  No military logic explains the comprehensive destruction Israel has inflicted on Gaza, destroying or damaging virtually every building in the Strip, and rendering nearly all Gazans homeless, except the lucky  (i.e., wealthy and/or well-connected) who have escaped into Egypt, where they are well advised to keep their heads down and remains as mute and invisible as possible.

What is clear to me from the film is what I have seen from the beginning. Israel evidently did not set out to kill as many Palestinians as possible; they could have done a far “better” job of it, as the figures show, even if we add to them a certain number (certainly in the thousands) whose bodies are still entombed in rubble.  But the figures and the film make clear that there was a fairly low bar for killing a few civilians in pursuit of a Hamasnik, though the horrendous stories told in the film are simply anecdotal evidence.  Even if the soldiers came forward and testified before a full-scale state commission of Inquiry, which (inshallah) a new Israeli prime minister will authorize next year, we will doubtless find out, for example, that 25% of the inhabitants were rarely, if ever, present when a compound was destroyed, or that technical intelligence Unit 8200 was not permitted to authorize an airstrike or that the  artificial Intelligence system Lavender was generally (or always) reviewed by human beings before a strike it had recommended was carried out.

The film is in no way an impartial inquiry, nor was it intended to be.  It was carried out by directors who wanted to show the world (or a portion of it) what it thought it already knew  for certain, that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza (which I think is clear, and I hope the Israeli Commission of Inquiry will call them out) plus, as many outside Israel believe (including many Jews and some IDF veterans such as Professor Omer Bartov), that Israel has committed genocide.  I disagree with the genocide charge and the film did nothing to change that belief.

NAZA was made in Hebrew, nominally for an Israeli audience.  Its directors certainly knew that it would be many years before any Israeli government would allow that, and indeed the current one has threatened to charge them with treason (unlikely to happen).  The government and others have already put out reams of material denouncing the film, some of which, such as this piece, raise genuine questions about its methodology.  Ordinary Israelis may not like their government’s extremism, but it is they or their children or grandchildren who have been doing reserve duty in Gaza, and few are willing to accept the light in which the film casts them.  The film, to the extent it could have any effect on the October 27 Israeli election, might perhaps induce some to vote for one of the soldier-oriented parties like The Miluimnikim/Reservists, or perhaps Amcha Yisrael, led by the far-right IDF reserve Colonel Ofer Winter, both of which parties I wrote off earlier this week.

Finally, critics complain that the film says nothing about Hamas, which placed its offices and weapons among the civilian population, thus “requiring” the IDF to fight and bomb and destroy there.  I am by no means defending Hamas, but insurgent groups invariably hide among the population, and Hamas is simultaneously both governing authority and insurgent. In Vietnam the NLF could hid in the jungles, while Gaza is the most crowded place on earth.  In any case, directors are entitled to choose what their film includes, and this one does not pretend to be objective nor comprehensive.

Judging by the reaction among Israelis, some, perhaps only they and their dwindling number of supporters elsewhere, don’t realize what a bloody disaster the Gaza War has been, so perhaps the film was needed.  But so far, much of the reaction has been predictably along party lines and, if anything, animosities between them have heightened.  Perhaps Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, currently touring the US. with a message of peace and reconciliation, can accomplish more nowadays than a film that highlights the brutality of one side.