NAZA Doc Provokes Israeli Death Threats After Venice Ovation — SkimNews
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- NAZA, produced by the Guardian and directed by Oscar-winning Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, earned a 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival's Sala Grande and is set to open in US cinemas on 30 September.
- The film draws on 24 anonymized Israeli military insiders, many from elite units, who describe AI-powered targeting systems selecting thousands of people for nighttime strikes, in a war where more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed.
- Netanyahu announced he would promote two bills stripping citizenship from those who 'defame' IDF soldiers and criminalizing the 'defamation' of Israeli soldiers and the state, saying offenders 'will be deeply hurt in his pocket.'
- Channel 14's Yehuda Schlesinger said directors Abraham and Szor should be 'pursued' and 'hunted,' called the Venice ovation '25 minutes of antisemitic applause,' while protesters outside Szor's parents' home demanded 'death penalty for traitors.'
- Right-wing activists broke into the offices of +972 Magazine and Sicha Mekomit, where Abraham's original Gaza reporting first appeared, filming the intrusion on Wednesday.
- Yedioth Ahronoth's Nahum Barnea called the citizenship-stripping push 'delusional,' while Haaretz's Etan Nechin wrote that in a healthy democracy the film 'would be shown on the evening news' — instead, its directors have been 'pushed into exile.'
Why it matters: By putting 24 Israeli military insiders on camera describing AI-driven targeting in a war that has killed 73,000+ Palestinians, the film forces the state's intelligence apparatus into open moral defense — and the response (citizenship bills, 'hunt' rhetoric, office break-ins, death-penalty chants) signals that the Israeli right now treats internal testimony about the war's conduct as an electoral threat rather than a national reckoning.
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