What happened in this Culture story?

Israel's culture minister called for Oscar-winning Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor to be stripped of citizenship over their Gaza documentary NAZA, which features 24 whistleblowers describing AI-powered targeting systems used in Israeli airstrikes.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Culture minister Miki Zohar** posted on X that he would "act immediately" to revoke the Israeli citizenship of directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor for "treason against the state," days after their Gaza documentary won at Venice.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**NAZA**, produced by the Guardian and named for an Israeli intelligence acronym for expected civilian casualties in an airstrike, features 24 Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers describing AI-powered targeting systems; one source claimed approval was given to kill 500 civilians to eliminate one Hamas member.

📎 SkimNews has covered NAZA 12+ times · see the file →

Israel Threatens to Revoke Gaza Doc Filmmakers' Citizenship — SkimNews

By The Guardian Culture · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-14

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Culture minister Miki Zohar posted on X that he would "act immediately" to revoke the Israeli citizenship of directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor for "treason against the state," days after their Gaza documentary won at Venice.
NAZA, produced by the Guardian and named for an Israeli intelligence acronym for expected civilian casualties in an airstrike, features 24 Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers describing AI-powered targeting systems; one source claimed approval was given to kill 500 civilians to eliminate one Hamas member.
The 80-minute film won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival following a record 25-minute standing ovation on Saturday, just before the political backlash.
National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also attacked the directors on X, telling them to "go away" and saying Hamas "will welcome you with open arms."
Israeli law permits citizenship revocation for "disloyalty" or "terrorism" — the supreme court confirmed this in 2022 and the law was expanded in 2023 — but it requires sign-off from the interior minister, justice minister, and judges, and has rarely been applied.
Abraham, who won an Oscar in 2025 for "No Other Land" about Israeli settler violence, told the Guardian: "Imagine if a Palestinian journalist in Gaza tried to do what we did and called up senior Israeli officials. There is no comparison. They would most likely be murdered."
The Israeli military said it "categorically rejects" the documentary's allegations and criticized reliance on anonymous testimonies whose identities "cannot be verified."

Why it matters: The citizenship-revocation threat puts Israel's internationally celebrated filmmakers — Venice jury prize winners, Oscar holders — on a collision course with their own government, invoking a 2022-2023 legal framework that has rarely been used but could in principle render the directors stateless over a film built on anonymous whistleblower testimony Israel refuses to independently verify.