“NAZA” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab”: Testimonies Shake the Zionist Entity

Before the film NAZA arrived at the Venice Film Festival, cinema had already succeeded in conveying the tragedy of Gaza to a global audience through The Voice of Hind Rajab. The film reconstructed the final hours of the five-year-old Palestinian girl’s life, relying on the actual audio recordings of her calls with the Palestinian Red Crescent dispatch center.

On January 29, 2024, in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood west of Gaza City, occupation tanks closed in on a civilian vehicle carrying Hind and her relatives, spraying it with more than 335 bullets—according to a forensic investigation conducted by Forensic Architecture in collaboration with Fault Lines and Earshot. Everyone in the car was killed, with the exception of Hind and her cousin, Layan Hamadeh.

The child was left alone among the bodies of her family, trapped inside the bullet-riddled vehicle, pleading over the phone: "I’m scared... please someone come save me." When an ambulance was dispatched to rescue her, it too was targeted, killing paramedics Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun. Hind was not found until February 10, twelve days later, in the very spot where her voice had gone silent.

At its Venice premiere on September 3, 2025, the audience gave the film a standing ovation that lasted over 20 minutes, before it went on to win the Grand Jury Prize, the "Silver Lion," at the 82nd edition of the festival.

But just a year later, Gaza returned to the Venice screen from an entirely different angle. This time, the voice was not that of a trapped Palestinian child pleading for help, but the voices of the killers themselves.

"NAZA" is a Hebrew acronym for "Nezek Agavi" (collateral damage)—a cold, technical term referring to the number of civilian casualties Israeli intelligence expects in a given strike before greenlighting its execution.

The film is based on testimonies from 24 individuals within the military and intelligence establishment—all speaking under condition of anonymity. They detail the mechanisms behind target selection in the Strip and the deployment of AI-powered targeting systems. According to what the two directors relayed from their sources, some accounts describe operating these systems as though working inside a "kill factory"—or playing a video game!

What proved even more controversial is that the film was directed by two Israeli journalists—Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who previously won an Oscar for No Other Land. Following its premiere at the festival's 83rd edition on September 10, the audience gave it a standing ovation that lasted roughly 25 minutes, before it went on to claim the Special Jury Prize.

  What Did the Whistleblowers Reveal to Warrant Such Acclaim?

The Israeli backlash was neither an artistic critique nor a challenge to the film's sources; instead, it took the form of calls to revoke the directors' citizenship. The situation escalated even further when, on September 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a video address his intent to push forward a legislative package dubbed the "NAZA Laws." One of the proposed measures mandates stripping citizenship from anyone who "defames" state or military personnel anywhere in the world.

  24 Military Insiders Reveal How Targeting Operations Are Run

Rather than relying on Palestinian testimonies or accounts from outside the military establishment, NAZA was built entirely on clandestine interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel who, according to the filmmakers, took part in the war on Gaza—including veterans of the intelligence elite, Unit 8200. Conducted over roughly three years, the interviews were filmed covertly at night on scattered rooftops across Tel Aviv, with the subjects’ identities concealed and their voices altered for their protection.

The testimonies detail intelligence-gathering and target-identification systems, including AI-driven tools and pre-calculated estimates of anticipated civilian casualties for specific strikes. One source in the film alleges that authorization was once granted for a strike expected to kill 500 civilians to eliminate a single Hamas operative.

In response, the Israeli military categorically rejected the film’s narrative, stating that reliance on anonymous sources makes verifying the testimonies impossible. It questioned whether certain sources possessed access to strategic details at such a level, explicitly denied planning any strike projected to kill 500 civilians or anything close to that figure, and maintained that target selection and strike authorizations remain entirely human decisions, with artificial intelligence never autonomously deciding to bomb.

  “NAZA” Did Not Come from Outside Israel: Its Directors Confront the Establishment They Belong To

The issue takes on an added dimension due to the filmmakers' own identities: NAZA was directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, co-produced in collaboration with The Guardian, and screened in the official competition of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in 2026.

The film diverges in its angle from most works that have covered the war through victim testimonies or imagery emerging from Gaza. Instead, its directors turn the camera inward, telling the story through the voices of those who carried out the actions rather than those who endured them. Abraham stated that the objective was to give soldiers and officers the space to speak about what they did, adding: "We wanted to hear, in as much detail as possible, what the killing systems in Gaza looked like and how they operated.

From Venice Acclaim to Netanyahu: How Revoking Citizenship Entered the Fray

  The fallout from the film did not stop at the festival. Immediately following the win, Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar issued a scathing statement calling the documentary "despicable" and accusing its directors of "self-hatred" and pandering to antisemitic applause worldwide. He announced his intention to take immediate steps to revoke their citizenship on charges of "high treason." In response, Abraham stated that the film had exposed truths that no one with a conscience could conceal.

The controversy then escalated to the highest levels of government when, on September 16, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to push two bills through the Knesset: one stripping citizenship from anyone who "defames" the military or the state anywhere in the world, and another sharply raising the cap on statutory damages in defamation lawsuits.

In just a matter of days, the controversy shifted from a debate over a documentary and its testimonies into a political showdown over the limits of speech, dissent, and critique inside Israel itself.

Gaza has never been far from the international spotlight, but across two consecutive editions of the Venice Film Festival, it became the centerpiece rather than a footnote. From The Voice of Hind Rajab, which returned the plea of a trapped child to the world, to NAZA, which pried open the vault of insider confessions, the world’s oldest film festival transformed into a stage for a single question: Who holds the right to tell the story—and who is punished for having told it?

Nor did the repercussions stop with the filmmakers alone. Within those very halls, Oscar-winning American actress Susan Sarandon appeared wearing a red pin representing the "Artists4Ceasefire" campaign in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. It was far from her first such stand; having already been dropped by major talent agency UTA in 2023 over her political stances, she stated plainly that she continues to lose roles to this day because Hollywood agencies tell people not to hire her. Even so, she stood in Venice declaring that global public opinion has shifted completely in favor of Palestine, and that among those who stand in solidarity with her, she found her family and her people.