The documentary, NAZA, premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year, where it won the Special Jury Prize and received a 25-minute standing ovation. It was created by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the filmmaking team behind the Academy Award-winning 2024 documentary No Other Land.
Over the course of three years, Abraham and Szor gathered interviews from more than 100 confidential sources. In the film, 24 interviewees speak under the expectation of complete anonymity for fear of retribution. They detail the intricate surveillance and technological systems used by the Israeli military in Gaza.
One interviewee said: "After October seventh everyone kept saying, 'There are no innocent people in Gaza.' This notion spread throughout the army and suddenly we are toppling entire buildings. It wasn't even an issue."
NAZA is an Israeli military acronym for collateral damage. One interviewee explained: "We say 15 NAZA. We don't say 15 people killed and certainly not that 15 children and women will be killed. We say 15 NAZA." Another said that "20 NAZA became the benchmark" for strikes against lower-ranking Hamas operatives.
The war has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
The Israeli Defence Forces has rejected the film's claims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to strip Abraham and Szor of their citizenship and pursue defamation charges. The filmmakers are unable to return to Israel and are now residing in the UK.
Abraham told the ABC: "We've made sure that every major claim in the film has multiple sources — in some cases more than a dozen sources who are backing up that claim. So, we feel very confident about the truth of what the soldiers are saying in the film."