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The war over the film Naza and collateral damage
On the impossibility of speaking objectively in a brutal age.
As soon as Naza was screened at the Venice Film Festival and the hall responded with a record 24-minute standing ovation, Israel rushed to reply with outrage. The culture minister proposed stripping the directors of their citizenship; the prime minister called for legislation to punish slander against the armed forces.
In the end, the Israel Defense Forces asked the rights holders for a copy of the film that accuses the IDF, in order to examine the charges against the military and respond to them. The accusations are grave: that the Israeli army builds into its operations in the Gaza Strip the possibility of civilian deaths. The film’s title refers to a Hebrew acronym meaning “collateral damage.”
Naza is being discussed heatedly and angrily. Yet the film has so far been seen only by those who were in the festival hall. It is not yet in cinemas or online. People judge it from the synopsis and from the impressions of those who have watched it. Someone in Israel said: “A film that no one has seen has already started a civil war.”
Paradoxically, Naza was also rejected on the Palestinian side. The first 10 minutes of the film recount the events that triggered the war in Gaza — the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Palestinians dislike the first 10 minutes; the Israeli establishment dislikes the remaining 110. On one side of the front the authors are called national traitors; on the other, Zionist propagandists.
Co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor were born in Israel. Abraham and Szor say they made the film so that their country would become better. They are not professional directors so much as radical human-rights activists. The producers were British filmmakers of Jewish origin. The work was probably shaped by advice from London professionals.
One of them, director Jonathan Glazer, made The Zone of Interest in 2023 — a film about the comfortable life of an Auschwitz commandant’s family next to the machinery of genocide on the other side of the camp fence. The analogy is readable in Naza, when anonymous Israeli soldiers speak about deaths in the Gaza Strip against footage of peaceful night-time life in Tel Aviv. The title itself, written in Latin letters, hints at “nazi.”
It is hard to accuse the filmmakers of hatred of the Jewish people, because the film was made, as it were, by “their own.” In Israel, however, they are not accepted as objective documentarians: the film (judging by descriptions) does not meet the standards of investigative journalism, which requires different points of view and verification of testimonies that remain anonymous to the viewer. Abraham and Szor began making the film already knowing that their tone would be accusatory.
In Israel they are seen as national traitors who place a tool of slander in the enemy’s hands. All the more so because a “blood libel” against the army is legitimised by the origins of the renegades. And the country is at war. Although society is not of one mind, comparisons of the Israeli army with the Nazis and the word “genocide” are extremely painful for most citizens traumatised by the catastrophe of 7 October.
Voices are heard: why don’t Israeli filmmakers make a film about their own view of events, about what happened on 7 October, about how Hamas fights while hiding behind Palestinian civilians. The filmmakers reply that something like a boycott of Israelis has taken hold at prestigious Western festival venues. Europeans are not ready to sympathise with Israel because, in public perception, it is the stronger side. Israelis explain this as the “moral arrogance” of people in a prosperous West. Europeans do not want to go into details; they prefer the pleasant feeling of moral superiority over those who found themselves at war.
Opponents retort that Europe’s anti-war stance is selective and applies only to certain countries. Those countries are not listened to; they are “cancelled.” In the enthusiasm of the Venice audience there is no understanding that it is not this particular conflict, but war as such that often comes with “collateral damage” — including the loss of impartiality and a sense of proportion.
