Israeli Leaders Unite to Reject NAZA Documentary on Gaza

Israeli soldiers' testimony about Gaza is igniting a firestorm across the nation's political ranks just weeks before the October elections. The country is already deeply fractured, yet this documentary has exposed one rare point of unity among Israel's leaders and media giants: a furious rejection of its contents.

The film, titled NAZA, was made by filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. It details claims that are not new at all. In April 2024, reports surfaced stating the Israeli military used artificial intelligence to select targets in Gaza. These systems allegedly ordered strikes on entire buildings to eliminate a single person identified by the software. Other serious accusations, including genocide and the deliberate creation of famine, have received little traction within Israel until now.

NAZA has changed that dynamic. It brought these allegations directly into the center of the political debate and unleashed a wave of abuse from all sides of Israeli society.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar reacted sharply to the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it earned a 25-minute standing ovation. He demanded the directors be stripped of their citizenship and called for an investigation by the internal intelligence service on charges of treason.

Army chief Eyal Zamir dismissed the work as built on blood libel. He ordered a legal probe to find out who provided military and intelligence sources to the filmmakers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the film as justification for new legislation aimed at revoking citizenship from anyone accused of smearing soldiers. In Ashdod, graffiti labeling the directors "traitors" has already appeared on walls.

"You can't really understand the extent of the madness from outside of the country," said Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call. Her outlet first carried many of the accusations found in the film. She noted that people are now attacking the friends and families of Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The conversation has shifted to revoking their citizenship or asking Shin Bet to investigate them simply for making a movie. It is not just politicians acting this way; journalists who should show solidarity are competing to attack them instead. It is scary.

In late 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that censorship and harassment were escalating in Israel. Israeli journalists told the group that their media approach had become part of the war effort. This shift significantly shaped how the public viewed the conflict in Gaza. By October 2025, a study by the think tank Molad found that only 3 percent of Channel 12's coverage during the first six months of the war mentioned the humanitarian crisis there. Of the 206 war-related images and video clips shown on Israel's most-watched network, just two depicted Palestinian civilian casualties.

Yet before the film dropped, polls showed most Israelis believed their media was balanced regarding the army's conduct in Gaza. "I guess it was because the mainstream media outlets in Israel did not investigate the conduct of the army during the war in Gaza, and hardly covered the war from the Palestinian point of view," said Anat Saragusti. She is a jurist and journalist who handles press freedom duties for the Union of Journalists in Israel. The shock felt by many came simply because the truth had finally been told.

The Israeli media hardly reported on the human toll and the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza." This statement highlights a glaring omission that many find disturbing. Compounding this gap, as Saragusti noted, was a deep-seated national narrative. That story insists the war was imposed on Israel. It claims Hamas carried out a massacre on October 7, 2023. It argues that Hamas's use of civilians as human shields made mass casualties in Gaza all but unavoidable. In this telling, Palestinian deaths were framed less as the product of Israeli conduct than as collateral damage forced on Israel by its enemy's tactics. She said this perspective shaped how events played out in public discourse.

Even journalists who usually support the anti-Netanyahu bloc have criticised the filmmakers, according to Israeli political sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal. "Israeli Jews deny the genocide," he continued. "Even all the opposition parties joined the vicious criticism of the filmmakers." The language used against the filmmakers has been echoed by some of Netanyahu's most prominent political rivals. On Monday, former military chief and one of Netanyahu's principal rivals Gadi Eisenkot denounced the film for "moral blindness, a detachment from reality, and harm to the State of Israel in a difficult hour". Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is also running in October's election, called the film a "horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters".

"Everything gets heightened the closer to the election we get," Noy said. "But I think only now, for those of us who live here, is the extent of the fascism becoming clear. Journalists, politicians and the media are forming some kind of incitement machine." "I've had anxieties over where Israel had been going for a long time," she said, "but right now I'm genuinely worried for my friends and colleagues." The fear isn't just about politics anymore; it is about safety and truth. People feel trapped by rhetoric that turns neighbors into enemies. This shift matters because it changes how information flows to the public. Regulations or government directives might not be the only force at work here, but the atmosphere feels heavy with tension.