Netanyahu Moves to Strip Citizenship of IDF Slanderers — SkimNews
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- Netanyahu called for a law to revoke the citizenship of anyone who "slanders IDF soldiers," declaring "their place is not among us," and separately proposed raising defamation damages twentyfold.
- "NAZA" premiered at the Venice Film Festival, won the special jury prize, and received a 24.5-minute standing ovation — the longest in the festival's history.
- The documentary, co-directed by Israeli citizens Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers and details, per its logline, "the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza."
- Culture Minister Miki Zohar had threatened on Sunday to revoke Abraham and Szor's Israeli citizenship, calling the film "shocking" and accusing the filmmakers of "betraying the state" for seeking "applause from antisemites around the world."
Why it matters: Netanyahu is converting a cabinet minister's ad hominem against two named Israeli filmmakers into proposed legislation — pairing citizenship revocation with a 20-fold hike in defamation damages. If enacted, the twin bills would make state criticism a pathway to statelessness for Israeli citizens, and would dramatically raise the financial cost of speaking against the military, turning a Venice prize into a direct policy trigger.
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