The film’s case against Israel rests on unverified Hamas figures and anonymous testimony. The IDF calls it “distorted, misleading, and disingenuous.”
JERUSALEM — NAZA, the documentary that took the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, claims that “Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza.” The film does not say where that figure comes from. It is the running total of the Gaza Health Ministry, run by Hamas, which does not distinguish between terrorists and civilians and does not record how anyone died.
The death toll is one of two foundations of the film’s case against Israel. The other is the testimony of 24 Israeli military and intelligence personnel, all of whom speak anonymously and none of whom cite a date, location, or specific strike that could be checked.
The Israel Defense Forces responded in writing on Oct. 1, calling the film “distorted, misleading, and disingenuous.” A rebuttal documentary, NAZA: The Real Story, is available to watch free at nazadocumentary.com/film.
Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Israeli filmmakers behind No Other Land, NAZA premiered at Venice on Sept. 10 and opened in theaters worldwide in late September.
A death toll that counts everyone
The Gaza Health Ministry has acknowledged gaps in its own data. In April 2024, it admitted it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 names on its list at the time.
Because the ministry records no cause of death, its total can include people Israel did not kill. The IDF reported that in the first month of the war alone, more than 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fell short and landed inside Gaza. Hamas has also executed Gazans it accused of collaborating with Israel and has fought armed clans opposed to its rule. All of those deaths can be counted in the figure the film attributes to Israel.
“To say every person that died in Gaza was killed by Israel is a vulgar lie,” said John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Hamas has also directed how deaths are publicly described. In 2014, it instructed its social media activists to call every person killed in Gaza an “innocent civilian” and not to post images of its fighters launching rockets from populated areas.
Testimony that cannot be verified
The film’s second pillar is its interviews. According to the IDF, the interviewees were mid-level intelligence personnel with no role in approving strikes. Because they are anonymous and give no specifics, critics have noted that viewers cannot verify their accounts and the IDF has nothing concrete to investigate.
A safeguard presented as a confession
The film takes its title from IDF shorthand for nezek agavi, Hebrew for collateral damage, which is the military’s estimate of the civilian harm a strike is expected to cause. International law requires militaries to make that estimate before every strike. According to the IDF, the estimate determines whether a strike proceeds, is modified, or is cancelled, and commanders cancelled strikes repeatedly as a result.
NAZA presents that legally required estimate as evidence that Israel set out to kill civilians.
The IDF rejected that claim. It said it “has never planned, approved or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians, or anything close to that number, were expected to be killed.” It said the civilian-harm figures cited in the film were upper limits on what a commander could approve, not targets, and that strikes are authorized by people, not artificial intelligence.
What the film leaves out
The film says little about the strikes Israel cancelled or the steps it took to protect civilians. In 2024, Spencer concluded that Israel had taken more measures to protect civilians than any military in history, including warning residents before strikes, calling off strikes, using smaller munitions, and opening evacuation routes.
The film has little to say about October 7, when Hamas massacred more than 1,200 people in Israel and took hundreds hostage, or about the tunnels and human shields that defined its war.
At a screening of NAZA in Delft, Sabine Taasa, whose husband and son were murdered by Hamas on October 7, spoke to that omission.
“You’re talking about collateral damage? My husband and my son were murdered by Hamas,” she said. “Where does this appear in your film?”
Sources
https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/idf-press-releases-israel-at-war/october-26-pr/idf-response-to-the-film-naza
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-910273
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-908582
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/04/09/hamas-run-gaza-health-ministry-admits-to-flaws-in-casualty-data
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/434155
https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-interior-ministry-social-media-activists-always-call-dead-innocent-civilians-dont-post
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286
https://www.instagram.com/p/DeLPYQUABMw/
https://nazadocumentary.com/film
