TEHRAN — An 80-minute Israeli documentary exposing the systematic, algorithmic murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza has triggered a severe political breakdown inside the regime.

Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, NAZA derives its title from the Hebrew military acronym for expected collateral casualties.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize and reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation. 

Its international acclaim has laid bare the calculated mechanics of the genocide to a global audience, shattering Tel Aviv’s propaganda.

Industrialized slaughter by design

The Israeli military uses the acronym “NAZA,” taken from the Hebrew “nezek agavi,” meaning “collateral damage,” to indicate how many civilians it expects to kill as collateral damage in an airstrike.

The documentary relies on nighttime interviews conducted with 24 anonymous Israeli military and intelligence “whistleblowers,” including members of Unit 8200.

These “insiders” describe an automated targeting apparatus that systematically treated Palestinian life as disposable data.

AI-assisted systems such as Lavender harvested data from mass surveillance networks to identify tens of thousands of human targets.

In several instances, military commanders have authorized strikes knowing they would kill up to 500 civilians to target a single individual.

Whistleblowers described the remote strikes as “akin to a video game,” fueled by a deeply entrenched military culture of total disregard for international law.

One soldier even referred to the slaughter as “insanely fun,” demonstrating the total dehumanization that drives the occupation forces.

Treason charges and panic in Tel Aviv

The film’s reception abroad ignited immediate fury across the Israeli political establishment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video message condemning the work as part of a “global wave of antisemitic incitement,” declaring that internal exposure of military conduct was “intolerable.”

Culture Minister Miki Zohar accused Abraham and Szor of “treason” and announced immediate actions with the Population and Immigration Authority to “revoke their Israeli citizenship.”

Far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir denounced the directors as an “embarrassment to the people of Israel” and told them to “go to Gaza instead.”

Witch hunt and complicity

The military command moved with equal panic to suppress the domestic fallout.

Military chief of staff Eyal Zamir dismissed the documentary as slander against blood and a deliberate distortion of reality.

He instructed “Military Advocate” Itai Ofir to launch an investigation to unmask the 24 whistleblowers while examining legal avenues to ban the film.

Within Unit 8200, some personnel signed petitions demanding officers determine who leaked the operational data.

However, these “whistleblowers” operated the very systems that have slaughtered more than 73,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.

Independent researchers and medical journals such as The Lancet note that the true death toll is likely far higher when accounting for tens of thousands buried beneath rubble.

Washington’s supply of thermobaric weapons and unconditional political shielding have made this scale of destruction possible.

The film’s co-director Abraham has emphasized that the mass killing was not an accident but a calculated policy, insisting that “Israeli society must confront the atrocities committed in its name.”