Netanyahu Vows to Strip Citizenship Over Gaza Film Backlash — SkimNews
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- NAZA, a Guardian-produced Gaza documentary whose title comes from an Israeli military acronym for expected civilian casualties, received a 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival in the Sala Grande after an 80-minute screening.
- The film features 24 anonymized Israeli military insiders from elite units describing AI-powered systems used to select targets, with some participants describing a sense of "fun" in justifying their actions in a war where more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed.
- Netanyahu announced on Wednesday he would promote two bills to strip the citizenship of anyone who "defames" IDF soldiers abroad, saying the target "will be deeply hurt in his pocket," prompting the Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Nahum Barnea to call the move "delusional."
- Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Oscar-winning Israeli directors, were branded "traitors" by right-wing politicians including Ofer Winter, while protesters outside Szor's parents' house called for the "death penalty for traitors" and Channel 14 journalist Yehuda Schlesinger said they should be "pursued" and "hunted."
- The offices of +972 Magazine, where Abraham's original reporting on the allegations first appeared, were broken into by right-wing activists who filmed the intrusion, according to director Haggai Matar.
- Haaretz warned the directors' lives were "credibly endangered," and dozens of Israeli human rights and international press freedom organizations rallied to defend them, while the film is set to open in US cinemas on 30 September.
- The backlash comes ahead of Israel's October elections and amid a UN finding that Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza, with pollster Dahlia Scheindlin noting the right is exploiting the film while most Israelis have not seen it.
Why it matters: The Netanyahu government's response — legislation to revoke citizenship, mobs calling for the "death penalty" and a break-in at a left-wing outlet — converts a film screening into a weapon against all internal dissent, with outgoing Haaretz editor Etan Nechin writing that in a "healthy democracy, NAZA would be shown on the evening news" but instead its makers have been "pushed into exile."
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