NAZA Gaza Doc: Venice Ovation, Death Threats in Israel — SkimNews
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- NAZA, the Guardian-produced Gaza documentary, earned a 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival's Sala Grande after an 80-minute screening, with US cinema release set for September 30
- 24 anonymized Israeli military insiders from elite units describe in Hebrew a series of AI-powered systems that select thousands of targets in strikes, often at night surrounded by families, in a war where more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed
- Benjamin Netanyahu announced legislation to strip citizenship from anyone who "defames" IDF soldiers, declaring: "We will revoke citizenship for anyone who defames IDF soldiers around the world — he will be deeply hurt in his pocket"
- Right-wing protesters gathered outside director Rachel Szor's parents' home chanting "death penalty for traitors," while rightwing activist Yehuda Schlesinger of Channel 14 called for Abraham and Szor to be "pursued" and "hunted"
- +972 Magazine's offices were broken into by right-wing activists who filmed the intrusion, with magazine director Haggai Matar confirming the breach on Wednesday
- Haaretz warned in an editorial that the filmmakers' lives were credibly endangered, as Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Nahum Barnea called the citizenship-stripping push "delusional" and former Jerusalem Post editor Yaakov Katz wrote: "It creates the impression that we have something to hide"
Why it matters: The response escalates an already acute post-October-7 crackdown on Israeli dissent, with Netanyahu's coalition turning an unseen film into electoral ammunition against a wider community of critics before the public can judge it. Polling expert Dahlia Scheindlin noted NAZA has dominated Israeli discourse far more than recent UK sanctions announcements, showing how the right exploits films unseeable by voters to shape narratives ahead of October elections.
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