Israeli minister to seek revocation of NAZA filmmakers’ citizenship for ‘treason’ - Middle East Eye

An Israeli minister said on Sunday that he would seek to revoke the citizenship of the filmmakers behind a documentary exposing a “system of killing” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Israel’s genocide.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar called the film NAZA “despicable” and said its winning of the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Saturday was “shocking”.

“The creators’ burning self-hatred, and their willingness to harm their homeland in order to receive applause from antisemites around the world, is beyond comprehension and constitutes a betrayal of the state,” Zohar said on X.

“I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators on the grounds of treason against the state,” he added.

The film, directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, investigates the systems behind Israel’s intended mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

It features interviews with 24 anonymised Israeli military and intelligence insiders.

They describe using AI-powered systems to identify targets and carry out remote bombings, often knowing that large numbers of civilians would be killed.

One military insider interviewed for the film said that, in one incident, the killing of up to 500 civilians was approved to kill a single high-value Hamas member.

The film received high praise at the Venice International Film Festival, including a record-breaking 24.5-minute standing ovation at its world premiere on 10 September.

The Israeli army rejected the allegations made in the film. 

It said the identity of the people interviewed could not be verified, including “whether they served in the IDF or not, in what capacity, or whether they were involved in the matters about which the allegations are being made”.

The film has faced a strong backlash in Israel.

Israeli MP and former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman called Abraham and Szor “haters of Israel”.

Yoseph Haddad, a member of a nascent right-wing party campaigning for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, called it an “appalling movie” that accused Israeli soldiers of genocide.

Abraham has urged Israelis to “listen to the [IDF] soldiers” featured in the film, who spoke in Hebrew so the public could “hear what they did in Gaza”.

“The core of the film is a system of killing that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza - estimates say the real number is much higher - the way it worked and the way the world allowed it to happen,” Abraham said.

Since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began in 2023, Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and wounded 174,000 more.

The army has also starved the population by blocking aid and commercial trade, leading to famine in Gaza City in August 2025.

Israeli forces have also destroyed the majority of homes, schools and hospitals in the territory, pushing the enclave into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Several leading international bodies and human rights organisations have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, including a United Nations commission of inquiry.

Numerous reports in Israeli media since the war began have featured confessions from soldiers and intelligence officers about a wide range of war crimes they committed in Gaza.

Last week, an Israeli reservist drone operator told Haaretz, on condition of anonymity, that officers treated Gaza’s entire population of two million Palestinians as targets.

“You have two million targets in Gaza,” one intelligence officer told him when he asked for a list of targets earlier this year.