Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded an investigation be opened into the identities of soldiers featured in an award-winning documentary.
The 24 members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) were interviewed by for the movie NAZA, a military acronym for “collateral damage“ in Hebrew.
The interviewees are only shown as shadowy figures with distorted voices in order to protect their identities while revealing how Israel determined the extent of civilian casualties on attacks in Gaza.
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Some claim the IDF uses AI models and mobile phone surveillance to calculate how many civilians could be killed in an attack, while others detailed horrific attacks on injured or starving Palestinians.
NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the 2026 Venice International Film Festival which secured a global release, but not in Israel.
Instead, Netanyahu called on the heads of IDF and Israeli intelligence communities to track down the soldiers involved.
“I demand that the Chief of the General Staff, the head of the Shin Bet and the Attorney General initiate a comprehensive investigation against the participants in the film NAZA and bring them to trial for serious information security offenses, criminal defamation, and harm to Israel’s political and security interests,” he said in a post to social media.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for an investigation to reveal the identities of IDF members who feature in the documentary Naza. Credit: Seth Wenig/AP
“The film presents a false, misleading, and biased plot that defames the State of Israel and the IDF in the world and severely damages Israel’s standing.
“We will always stand with our beloved and heroic fighters!”
Several days prior, a Certificate of Recognition was awarded to the creators of the film NAZA: A True Story which refutes the claims and portrays Hamas’ “crimes and its vile use of the civilian population”.
“The film, which presents testimonies from soldiers, refutes the blood libels against IDF soldiers and commanders, thereby defending our soldiers and the State of Israel,” a post to the Prime Minister of Israel’s X account reads.
NAZA was directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, whose 2024 documentary about Israeli settlers No Other Land won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
Directed by Israeli filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, the film reveals the extent of civilians killed by the IDF during its war with Gaza. Credit: Scott A Garfitt/AP Photo/Scott A Garfitt
After the movie’s debut at Venice this September, Abraham told reporters they “just told these officers and soldiers, please describe to us what you did”.
He told Variety that he and Szor “found ourselves wanting to use the kind of position that we have, the access that we have to people in our own society who went into the military to look at that system as it carried out what all human rights organizations are saying is a genocide”.
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