NAZA: Israeli Intelligence Discuss Gaza Assault — SkimNews
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- NAZA, a documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, features anonymised Israeli intelligence members discussing their remote role in the Gaza assault — with one subject remarking they have been "conducting a genocide." Jonathan Glazer is an executive producer; the Guardian produces the film.
- The Israeli government has floated stripping Abraham and Szor of their citizenship and recently launched a mimicking rebuttal documentary, "Naza: The Real Story," trying to reclaim control of the story.
- The piece situates NAZA within "perpetrator cinema," alongside Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (2013, Indonesian death squads), Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure (Abu Ghraib soldiers), Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest (Auschwitz commandant), and Lissette Orozco's Adriana's Pact (2017, Pinochet-era Chile).
- Yuval Abraham has said some interviewees spoke from "the opposite of shame," while Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha argued the last three years in Gaza are already documented by Palestinians, accusing NAZA of privileging the perpetrator.
- Oppenheimer told the Jewish Currents podcast: "To understand a crime as a human activity, we have to look at the human beings who undertake that activity."
Why it matters: The Israeli government's threat to revoke NAZA's directors' citizenship — alongside a state-aligned rebuttal documentary — shows how the film escalated the cultural confrontation over Gaza into direct state action. For audiences, NAZA crystallizes a question Oppenheimer put plainly: how do you look at people who calmly confess to atrocity and still claim shared humanity?
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