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In ‘NAZA,’ Israeli whistleblowers’ revelations about civilian deaths in Gaza reflect a longer history of Palestinian isolation
In ‘NAZA,’ Israeli whistleblowers’ revelations about civilian deaths in Gaza reflect a longer history of Palestinian isolation. Originally published by The Conversation.
By Drew Paul, Professor of Arabic, University of Tennessee · 2026-09-28T09:33:01.191Z
'NAZA' filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor conducted interviews with anonymous members of Israeli military and intelligence services from the rooftops of Tel Aviv, Israel. Gil Cohen Magen/AFP via Getty Images There’s a powerful scene in Moroccan French Israeli filmmaker Simone Bitton’s 2004 documentary “ Wall https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413018/ ,” which tells the story of the construction of the West Bank barrier https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2016.1174601 , a 448 mile – or 721 kilometer – network of walls and fences dividing large parts of the West Bank from Israel. A concrete slab is slowly lowered into place in order to complete a section of the wall. Inch by inch, the vibrant, hilly Palestinian community on the other side gets smaller and smaller. And then – just like that – a world that’s a stone’s throw away is gone. As someone https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book israel palestine.html who studies https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/arrested movement in the middle east 9780755656721/ the restrictions placed on Palestinians, I often think about this scene as a microcosm of Israel’s decades long use of walls, checkpoints and surveillance technologies to seal off Palestinians from the rest of society.
A still from the 2004 documentary ‘Wall’ depicts the moment that a section of the West Bank barrier is completed. Down The Rabbit Hole/YouTube Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than the Gaza Strip, which Israel fenced in during the 1990s https://www.jstor.org/stable/45406228 and has blockaded since 2007 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract id=2214163 , citing security concerns and the threat of militant attacks. Thanks to these barriers, the immense suffering of Palestinians in Gaza – more than 70,000 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpd1x00exo of whom have been killed as a result of the Israel Hamas war since 2023 – has been difficult to document. The Israeli government largely bars international journalists from entering the Gaza Strip independently, while Palestinians in Gaza are generally not allowed to leave the Gaza Strip. But the Sept. 10, 2026, premiere of Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s film “ NAZA https://www.imdb.com/title/tt44766123/ ” at the Venice International Film Festival has put the spotlight on the ongoing tragedy in Gaza without relying on footage of gruesome corpses or bombed out neighborhoods. The film consists largely of anonymous testimony from 24 members of Israel’s military and intelligence services. They discuss the ways in which Israel has used artificial intelligence https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/11/naza directors film israeli intelligence rachel szor yuval abraham to target Hamas officials, despite knowing the attacks will also generate large numbers of civilian casualties. The title, “NAZA,” comes from an acronym for the Hebrew phrase “nezek agavi,” or “collateral damage,” and it’s the Israeli military’s threshold system for how many civilian casualties are acceptable in its military strikes on Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks https://www.cfr.org/global conflict tracker/conflict/israeli palestinian conflict . Hamas led militants from Gaza launched those attacks in southern Israel, murdering 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and also taking about 250 hostages. To me, part of the film’s power lies in its focus on the clinical way of carrying out strikes on Gaza from a distance. But the Israeli military’s approach could only work after systematically isolating the Palestinian people over the course of decades. Unseen victims In addition to constructing walls and blockading Gaza, Israel has enforced separation of Palestinians by restricting or denying permits https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2011.562944 to Palestinians wishing to enter or work in Israel through aerial surveillance https://www.versobooks.com/products/2007 hollow land and through the expansion https://www.versobooks.com/products/2007 hollow land of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Both the visual language and the content of “NAZA” reflect and reveal how knowledge of Palestinian suffering is often mitigated in Israeli culture, politics and daily life. The film juxtaposes audio of Israeli soldiers’ testimony with shots of the Tel Aviv cityscape at night. In these interviews, the soldiers map out how targets are chosen, how attacks are planned and how much leeway is given for civilian casualties. The victims themselves are largely unseen, despite their close proximity: Tel Aviv sits a mere 43 miles – or 70 kilometers – up the coast from the Gaza Strip.
Gaza City, shown on Sept. 21, 2026, is just 43 miles from Tel Aviv, yet the two can seem worlds apart. Faiz Qreqa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images The choice to film primarily at night, in darkness, using disembodied voices to tell a story not depicted on camera, further highlights the extent to which these events have been obscured in Israel and around the world. Perhaps that’s why the Israeli government has gone to such great lengths to discredit the film, saying it contains “ deliberate distortions of reality https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/14/gaza documentary makers naza israel citizenship ntwnfb? .” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to revoke the citizenship of its directors https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/world/middleeast/israel naza documentary backlash.html . In response to the interest and backlash surrounding the film, the filmmakers announced https://x.com/yuval abraham/status/2103061893913162054 that “NAZA” will be available to stream for free, for anyone to see, beginning in November 2026. Breaking through “NAZA” highlights a psychological distance between attacker and attacked that was enabled by AI, computer screens and the physical isolation of the targets. Yet it is far from the first film to call attention to the invisibility of Palestinians. Elia Suleiman’s 2002 dark comedy “ Divine Intervention https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274428/ ” repeatedly stages scenes in which Palestinian characters are stuck at or try to get around an Israeli military checkpoint. And Yoav Shamir’s 2003 documentary “ Checkpoint https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391857/ ” chronicles everyday interactions between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. Other films center on acts of transgression or protest. Hany Abu Assad’s 2013 drama “ Omar https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852406/ ” and Ameen Nayfeh’s 2020 drama “ 200 Meters https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12246266/ ” both feature Palestinian characters who break the law and surreptitiously cross the West Bank border into Israeli territory, exposing themselves to physical and legal danger. “ No Other Land https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30953759/ ” – the 2024 documentary that netted Abraham and Szor an Oscar https://theconversation.com/a palestinian israeli film just won an oscar so why is it so hard to see 249233 , along with fellow directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal – points the camera on Palestinian protest movements against land expropriations and home demolitions in the West Bank. In the 2011 film “ 5 Broken Cameras https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125423/ ,” Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat captures his West Bank village’s struggle against the construction of a massive wall that chokes off farmland and access to vital resources. Even as his cameras are repeatedly damaged or destroyed, Burnat refuses to stop documenting the resistance. Crying while shooting “NAZA” also points to another phenomenon: how isolation and separation encourage complicity. The physical distance between Israeli soldiers and the people they target may make it easier to go along with or ignore what is happening. In this way, “NAZA” grapples with a trope in Israeli films and literature of exploring the guilt of Israeli soldiers. Sometimes derisively referred to by critics as “ shooting and crying https://academic.oup.com/screen/article abstract/54/1/44/1623426 ,” the thematic framework of these films has been criticized for focusing on Israeli moral anguish at the expense of Palestinian experiences and perspectives. For example, S. Yizhar’s 1949 novel, “Khirbet Khizeh,” which was adapted into a film https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151202/ in 1978, tells the story from the perspective of Micha, an Israeli soldier fighting in the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. He’s part of a squad that expels Palestinians from their village, and his ensuing guilt provokes a crisis of conscience that haunts him for years to come. Decades later, the 2008 animated documentary “ Waltz With Bashir https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185616/ ” follows the film’s director, Ari Folman, as he plumbs his repressed memories of his participation in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut https://www.npr.org/2007/08/28/12744311/timeline 1982 siege of beirut and how he inadvertently helped Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia fighters carry out massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps https://imeu.org/resources/resources/explainer the sabra shatila massacre/113 . The “shooting and crying” genre was largely accepted in mainstream Israeli culture, with “Khirbet Khizeh” taught in Israeli schools https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/963600/summary for decades. But the Israeli government’s hostile reaction to “NAZA” perhaps signals not only the growing intolerance of dissent in Israel, but also a fading cultural and political concern https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global currents/shooting and singing/ with the morality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Whose voices get heard The centering of Israeli perspectives in these earlier works – as well as in “NAZA” – also shows how violence against Palestinians can be given greater credence when it’s described by Israelis themselves. Recent Palestinian narratives about Gaza, such as “ From Ground Zero https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32606918/ ” and “ Thirteen in Gaza https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43743832/ ,” have garnered some attention and praise https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/09/from ground zero stories from gaza review scenes of ordinary life in extremis in the film world https://deadline.com/2026/09/thirteen gaza trailer father daughter palestinian netpac 1237109243/ , but nowhere near the same amount as “NAZA” has in the weeks since its premiere. Even “No Other Land,” which is centered on a Palestinian village, features an Israeli journalist and filmmaker, Abraham, documenting the protests and confronting Israeli soldiers, and may not have received the same acclaim if it had been made entirely by Palestinians. Yet, despite these many barriers, Palestinians have never stopped finding ways to make themselves heard. In addition to films like “Omar” and “200 Meters,” videos and images shared directly to social media https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2024.2415908 have allowed Palestinians to connect directly with audiences and shape global awareness of their plight, especially since the current war in Gaza began. They have been able to bypass the physical barriers that have long restricted their movement – and the cultural barriers that have often kept their experiences out of sight.
Drew Paul does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.