NAZA: Why are old Gaza allegations causing new fury in Israel?

Israeli soldiers’ Gaza testimony causes backlash across much of the country’s political establishment.

Graffiti branding Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the directors of the documentary film Naza 'traitors' in Hebrew, on a wall in Ashdod, southern Israel [Amir Cohen/Reuters]

Israel’s bitter political divisions are particularly sharp before the country’s October elections. But the furious response to a new documentary about the military’s actions in the genocidal war on Gaza has revealed an issue that much of Israel’s political and media establishment appears united on.

Few of the central allegations in NAZA, made by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, are new. Reports that the Israeli military was relying on artificial intelligence systems to generate targets in Gaza, often killing the inhabitants of entire buildings to kill just one individual identified by the system, were reported in April 2024.

list 1 of 4 Israel weaponises AI for West Bank demolitions

list 2 of 4 Netanyahu threatens to revoke Israeli citizenship of NAZA filmmakers

list 3 of 4 Jerusalem Daily: Israelis protest outside ‘NAZA’ filmmaker’s home

list 4 of 4 Israel would rather not watch NAZA

Other accusations against Israel, such as committing genocide, deliberately causing a famine, and unlawfully killing children, have also not received much attention in Israel.

In contrast, NAZA has unleashed a litany of abuse from across Israel, and brought the allegations to the centre of Israel’s political debate.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar reacted to the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival – where it received a 25-minute standing ovation – by calling for the directors to be stripped of their citizenship and to be investigated by the internal intelligence service for treason.

Army chief Eyal Zamir has dismissed the film as being built on blood libel and ordered a legal probe to hunt down its military and intelligence sources.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also cited the film when advancing legislation to revoke citizenship from anyone deemed to be smearing the country’s soldiers, while in the coastal city of Ashdod, graffiti branding the directors “traitors” has appeared on the walls.

“You can’t really understand the extent of the madness from outside of the country,” Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call, which first carried many of the accusations contained in the film, said. “They’re attacking the friends and families of [the filmmakers] Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. They’re talking about revoking their citizenship. They’re asking the Shin Bet to investigate them – for making a film, and it isn’t just the politicians. Journalists, who you might expect to show some kind of solidarity with them, are competing to attack them. It’s scary.”

In late 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported escalating censorship and harassment in Israel, with Israeli journalists telling the organisation that the media’s approach had become “part of the war effort” and, by extension, significantly shaped Israeli view of their war on Gaza.

In October 2025, a study by the Israeli think tank Molad found that only 3 percent of Channel 12’s coverage of the first six months of the war mentioned Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Of 206 war-related images and video clips broadcast by the network, Israel’s most-watched channel, only two showed Palestinian civilian casualties.

Nevertheless, before the film’s release, polls found that most Israelis believed the coverage they were receiving of the military’s conduct in Gaza was balanced.

Director Yuval Abraham and Director Rachel Szor winners of the Special Jury Prize for “Naza” attend a photocall on the red carpet following the closing ceremony of the 83rd Venice Film Festival at Venice Lido on September 12, 2026 [Tiziana Fabi/AFP]

“I guess it was because the mainstream media outlets in Israel did not investigate the conduct of the army during the war in Gaza, and hardly covered the war from the Palestinian point of view,” Anat Saragusti, the Israeli jurist and journalist responsible for press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel, said of the shock that had accompanied the release of the film. “[The Israeli media] hardly reported on the human toll and the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Compounding the gap, Saragusti said, was a deep-seated national narrative: that the war had been imposed on Israel, that Hamas had carried out a massacre on October 7, 2023, and that Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields made mass casualties in Gaza all but unavoidable.

Palestinian deaths, in this telling, were framed less as the product of Israeli conduct than as collateral damage forced on Israel by its enemy’s tactics, she said.

“Even journalists that usually support the anti-Netanyahu bloc have criticised the filmmakers,” Israeli political sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal said.

“Israeli Jews deny the genocide,” he continued, “Even all the opposition parties joined the vicious criticism of the filmmakers.”

The language used against the filmmakers has been echoed by some of Netanyahu’s most prominent political rivals.

On Monday, former military chief and one of Netanyahu’s principal rivals Gadi Eisenkot denounced the film for “moral blindness, a detachment from reality, and harm to the State of Israel in a difficult hour”.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is also running in October’s election, called the film a “horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters”.

“Everything gets heightened the closer to the election we get,” Noy said. “But I think only now, for those of us who live here, is the extent of the fascism becoming clear. Journalists, politicians and the media are forming some kind of incitement machine.”

“I’ve had anxieties over where Israel had been going for a long time,” she said, “but right now I’m genuinely worried for my friends and colleagues.”

以色列士兵在加沙的证词在该国大部分政治机构中引发了强烈反弹。

在以色列南部城市阿什杜德，一面墙上被涂鸦，上面用希伯来语写着纪录片《纳扎》的导演尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕和雷切尔·索尔是“叛徒”。[Amir Cohen/路透社]

在以色列10月大选前夕，该国政治分歧尤为尖锐。但一部关于以色列军方在加沙种族灭绝战争中行动的新纪录片引发的强烈反响，揭示了以色列政界和媒体界在某个问题上似乎达成了共识。

以色列电影制作人尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕和雷切尔·索尔在纪录片《纳扎》中提出的核心指控鲜有新意。早在2024年4月，就有报道称以色列军方依赖人工智能系统在加沙生成目标，为了击毙系统识别出的单个目标，常常屠杀整栋建筑物内的居民。

以色列将人工智能武器化用于西岸拆迁（共4项，第1项）

内塔尼亚胡威胁要剥夺 NAZA 电影制作人的以色列公民身份（共 4 份名单，此为第 2 份）

《耶路撒冷日报》报道（共四条）：以色列人在电影《纳扎》导演家门外举行抗议活动

以色列不愿观看纳扎尔的4项举措之4

以色列对其他指控，如犯下种族灭绝罪、蓄意造成饥荒、非法杀害儿童等，在以色列也未引起太多关注。

相比之下，NAZA 则在以色列各地掀起了一连串的谩骂，并将这些指控推到了以色列政治辩论的中心。

文化部长米基·佐哈尔对该片在威尼斯电影节首映式上的表现做出了回应——该片在电影节上获得了 25 分钟的起立鼓掌——他呼吁剥夺导演的公民身份，并由内部情报部门以叛国罪对其进行调查。

陆军总司令埃亚尔·扎米尔驳斥这部电影是建立在血腥诽谤之上的，并下令进行法律调查，追查其军事和情报来源。

总理本杰明·内塔尼亚胡在推进一项旨在剥夺任何被认为抹黑该国士兵的人的公民身份的立法时也提到了这部电影。与此同时，在沿海城市阿什杜德，墙上出现了将导演们称为“叛徒”的涂鸦。

“身处国外，你根本无法真正理解这场疯狂的程度，”《本地呼声》（Local Call）的编辑奥莉·诺伊说道。《本地呼声》率先刊登了影片中的许多指控。“他们攻击尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕和瑞秋·索尔的亲朋好友。他们扬言要剥夺他们的公民身份。他们要求以色列国家安全局（辛贝特）调查他们——仅仅因为他们拍了一部电影。而且，攻击他们的不仅仅是政客。就连那些本应与他们团结一致的记者们，也在竞相攻击他们。这太可怕了。”

2025 年末，保护记者委员会报告称，以色列的审查和骚扰事件不断升级，以色列记者告诉该组织，媒体的做法已成为“战争努力的一部分”，并由此极大地影响了以色列对加沙战争的看法。

2025年10月，以色列智库莫拉德（Molad）的一项研究发现，在战争爆发后的前六个月里，以色列第12频道仅有3%的报道提及加沙的人道主义危机。该频道是以色列收视率最高的电视网，在其播出的206个与战争相关的图片和视频片段中，只有两个显示了巴勒斯坦平民伤亡。

然而，在电影上映之前，民意调查显示，大多数以色列人认为他们所看到的关于以色列军方在加沙行动的报道是平衡的。

2026年9月12日，在威尼斯丽都岛举行的第83届威尼斯电影节闭幕式上，凭借电影《娜莎》获得评审团特别奖的导演尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕和导演瑞秋·索尔出席了红毯拍照活动。[Tiziana Fabi/AFP]

“我想是因为以色列主流媒体没有调查以色列军队在加沙战争期间的行为，也几乎没有从巴勒斯坦人的角度报道这场战争，”以色列记者联盟负责新闻自由的以色列法学家兼记者阿纳特·萨拉古斯蒂在谈到这部电影上映带来的冲击时说道。“（以色列媒体）几乎没有报道加沙的人员伤亡和人道主义危机的规模。”

萨拉古斯蒂表示，加剧这种差距的是一种根深蒂固的民族叙事：这场战争是强加给以色列的，哈马斯在 2023 年 10 月 7 日进行了一场大屠杀，哈马斯利用平民作为人肉盾牌，使得加沙的大规模伤亡几乎不可避免。

她表示，在这种叙述方式下，巴勒斯坦人的死亡与其说是以色列行为的产物，不如说是以色列的敌人的策略强加给以色列的附带损害。

以色列政治社会学家丹尼尔·巴尔-塔尔表示：“就连通常支持反内塔尼亚胡阵营的记者也批评了这些电影制作人。”

“以色列犹太人否认种族灭绝，”他继续说道，“甚至所有反对党都加入了对电影制作人的恶毒批评。”

针对电影制作人的言论也得到了内塔尼亚胡一些最著名政治对手的响应。

周一，前军事首脑、内塔尼亚胡的主要竞争对手之一加迪·艾森科特谴责这部电影“道德盲目、脱离现实，并在以色列国面临困境之际对其造成伤害”。

前总理纳夫塔利·贝内特（Naftali Bennett）也将参加10月份的选举，他称这部电影是“对我们儿女的骇人听闻的血腥诽谤”。

“随着选举临近，一切都愈演愈烈，”诺伊说。“但我认为，只有现在，对于我们这些生活在这里的人来说，法西斯主义的程度才真正显现出来。记者、政客和媒体正在组成某种煽动机器。”

“我长期以来一直对以色列的未来感到焦虑，”她说，“但现在我真的非常担心我的朋友和同事。”