Twenty-Five Minutes of Misery

NAZA, the applause in Venice, and the conversation Israel needs

Twenty-five minutes. Try clapping for three.

I keep coming back to that number. After NAZA, the documentary alleging that Israel systematically accepted excessive civilian casualties in Gaza, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, the audience reportedly stood and applauded for nearly twenty-five minutes. You could make coffee, drink it, wash the cup, and come back. Still clapping.

I wasn’t in that theater. I don’t know what was in those people’s hearts. But from where I sit, that reception felt less like appreciation for a film than an opportunity to demonstrate disgust with Israel. And I found it sickening.

The film has become one of the most talked-about stories in Israel, competing for attention with the war and the country’s political turmoil. That is remarkable for a documentary most Israelis have not yet had the opportunity to see. The argument over NAZA has become a national event before the film itself has reached a national audience. With a New York opening scheduled for September 30 at IFC Center, that argument is about to reach audiences here.

Now comes the disclosure: I haven’t seen the movie. Neither had many rushing to condemn it—or defend it. I am writing about its reception and publicly circulated claims. I cannot tell you whether the finished film earns its conclusions. I can tell you why its celebration troubles me.

Listening to Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi discuss NAZA on their For Heaven’s Sake podcast, I recognized something more uncomfortable than outrage: wanting a serious conversation about Israel’s conduct in Gaza while recoiling from how that conversation is being imposed.

Israel needs to examine whether limits on civilian harm held, where they changed, and whether those changes were justified.

But from what I have read and heard, NAZA strikes me as precisely the wrong vehicle, and more of a targeted hit job that does more harm than good. When Israelis believe their sons and daughters, risking their lives to prevent another October 7, are being presented as willing participants in mass murder, their first response is to defend them. Questions deserving examination disappear into the shouting.

The applause abroad and fury at home feed each other. Everyone becomes more certain. Who becomes better informed?

October 7 belongs at the center of this discussion. It cannot become a sentence of obligatory background before we judge Israel’s response.

For Israelis, the massacre and hostage-taking were intimate. These were their children, parents, friends and communities. People were murdered where they were supposed to be safe. Others were dragged into Gaza. The country went to war carrying grief, fear and the devastating knowledge that its protectors had failed.

I reject the casual assumption that these young Israelis woke up wanting to kill civilians. They wanted their friends to survive, the hostages home and their families protected.

But grief can become rage. The desire to protect can become entangled with the desire to punish. Israelis are human beings, susceptible to impulses that have accompanied other societies into war. Rules, command responsibility and restraint matter most when they are hardest to maintain.

Reporting indicates that the threshold for accepted civilian risk widened after October 7—and subsequently narrowed. A December 2024 New York Times investigation described restrictions being relaxed immediately after the attack, then tightened beginning in November, with further restrictions by late January 2024. The IDF acknowledged changes while maintaining that its practices complied with international law. Reporting on the changes.

What changed? Who authorized it? What military assessments drove those decisions? Did anger influence them? What prompted the later tightening?

That is the beginning of a serious inquiry. Neither blanket condemnation nor blanket reassurance will do.

An honest account must also examine Israel’s efforts to prevent civilian deaths.

Phone calls. Text messages. Recorded warnings. Leaflet drops. Evacuation maps and designated routes. Its practices have also included “roof knocking,” a preliminary strike intended to warn occupants before a building is attacked.

These measures require intelligence, personnel and resources. They can also carry a military cost: warnings sacrifice surprise, giving enemy fighters time to relocate or prepare, potentially increasing the danger to Israeli troops. That deserves weight when assessing intent.

John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army officer and urban-warfare specialist, has argued that Israel has taken more precautions to protect civilians than any other military in history. These efforts deserve more than a passing acknowledgment before the prosecution resumes. An accusation that Israel intended to destroy a civilian population must seriously confront the measures it took to protect civilian lives—even at potential cost to its own forces. These efforts deserve more than a passing acknowledgment before the prosecution resumes.

Which brings us to nezek agavi, collateral damage.

It is a bloodless phrase for something terrible. Hartman suggests that we call it “collateral killing.” There are people behind the calculation. Children. Parents. Families. Military terminology must never make them disappear.

But estimating how many civilians might die is also an essential step in preventing their deaths. A targeting sheet recording civilians at risk is not, by its existence, a confession of murderous intent.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Zehavi explains in a Times of Israel blog essay that she helped develop civilian-warning and target-approval procedures. Projected civilian harm, she writes, helps determine whether a strike proceeds, who must approve it, which weapons can be used and what precautions are required.

She specifically addresses “Naza 500.” In her account, that estimate signals potential harm requiring reduction through warnings, different munitions or cancellation. It does not itself authorize killing 500 civilians.

That distinction is enormous.

An initial estimate, an approved ceiling for a particular operation and a general targeting policy are different things. Zehavi is responding to promotional material. But her explanation raises a question that applause cannot answer: are viewers being shown what the document actually means within the decision-making process? Counting civilians is meaningful. What commanders do with the count is decisive.

For those invoking genocide as though intent were already established, these efforts demand an explanation. Gathering civilian-population data, building warning systems and creating procedures to limit harm are relevant evidence when assessing intent. Where attacks were changed, delayed or canceled to spare civilians, that evidence becomes stronger.

An accusation of intent to destroy a population must reckon seriously with efforts to protect it. It cannot simply wave them away.

The evidence matters as much as the terminology. The film relies on testimony from 24 anonymous military insiders. Anonymity can protect sources without invalidating their testimony. But it places considerable responsibility on the filmmakers. What did each witness know firsthand? What was corroborated? Where does an account of one incident become a conclusion about an entire military’s policy?

The filmmakers say they verified identities and incidents. The IDF disputes the allegations and the witnesses’ ability to substantiate some of them. Viewers deserve enough information to assess that dispute. Emotional power cannot substitute for establishing what happened.

Abraham’s interview with Raviv Drucker, a prominent and respected Israeli investigative journalist, did little to reassure me. Halevi described Drucker’s questioning as fair and thoughtful. Yet when pressed about context and omissions, Abraham challenged him to make his own film, according to Halevi’s account. Coverage of the interview describes a similar response.

I find that dismissive and more than a bit childish. A filmmaker making allegations this grave should explain his editorial choices. Israeli television’s shortcomings do not exempt his work from scrutiny.

My fear is that the verdict will travel faster than the examination. Festival acclaim becomes a headline. The headline becomes a recommendation. Eventually, a disputed interpretation acquires the authority of something everybody knows.

Twenty-five minutes of applause measures the strength of an audience’s response. It tells us nothing about whether an allegation has survived scrutiny.

And scrutiny must include Israel’s failures. Could civilians receive the warnings and act on them? Were risk calculations accurate, and did they constrain attacks? Later tightening cannot erase harm caused by earlier decisions.

Hamas’s conduct and battlefield conditions belong in that examination. So do Israeli commanders’ choices. Recognizing the war’s difficulty does not relieve anyone of responsibility for how it was fought.

I want Israel to ask those questions because civilian lives matter, and because its moral standards must mean something when tested.

Threatening the filmmakers or calling for their citizenship to be revoked advances none of that. It supplies no evidence, answers no allegation and makes a substantive response harder to hear.

Near the podcast’s end, Halevi describes feeling protective toward the filmmaker, despite believing he has done enormous harm. He worries about his safety—and what the fury directed at him is bringing out in Israeli society. That is a moral instinct worth preserving: seeing a fellow human being even through anger.

I remain angry about Venice. I fear NAZA, as presented and celebrated, will harden judgments abroad and defenses inside Israel, leaving less room for the conversation Israelis need. But I want that conversation badly enough to insist on evidence—including evidence that makes me uncomfortable.

Twenty-five minutes is a long time to applaud. I hope we can summon considerably more patience for the facts.