‘NAZA’: Exposing Israel’s Killing Machine in Gaza, by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor – 10 September 2026

From +972 Magazine

Our new film shows how Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians was a calculated and intentional act, through the testimonies of those responsible. 

Over the past three years, we conducted night-time interviews on the rooftops of Tel Aviv with 24 Israeli soldiers who played an active role in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Most of them were intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians. 

Their testimonies form the basis of “NAZA,” a new documentary we directed — produced by The Guardian and James Wilson and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer — that premieres this evening at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. 

We interviewed these soldiers not because this was the only way to know what Israel has done in Gaza. Anyone who has seen the devastation in the Strip, listened to Gaza’s residents, or simply took Israeli leaders at their word should have recognized this truth years ago. 

We made this film for one simple reason: We understood that testimonies from officers and soldiers in the army that annihilated Gaza — those who conducted the surveillance, who calculated how many innocent people were likely to be killed in each house, and who repeatedly gave the green light to bomb entire families — would make it even harder to deny the crimes. And that denial is part of what allows these crimes to continue until today.

This is a film about a system. It focuses on orders, policies, and patterns of operation, not deviations from them. The conclusion that we draw from the testimonies is clear: The mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was not a “tragic byproduct” of a war against Hamas, as it is commonly portrayed in Israel, but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act. This is why a UN commission, the world’s leading human rights groups, and Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars have described it as a genocide.

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Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem. Rachel Szor is a filmmaker and cinematographer.

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