GOA, India – There are films that recount the horrors of war, films that make audiences feel the pain of those who endure it, and films that take us somewhere far more disturbing: into the machinery that makes such horrors possible. NAZA, the documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, belongs to this third category. It asks us to look beyond the images of destruction that have become tragically familiar from Gaza and confront the systems, institutional cultures and technological processes through which the destruction of human life can be organised, assessed and justified.

The film received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, where its premiere reportedly prompted an extraordinary standing ovation lasting approximately twenty-five minutes. The response was significant, not simply as recognition of cinematic achievement, but because the documentary arrived at a moment when the world has witnessed Gaza's devastation on an almost unimaginable scale, while political institutions have struggled to translate international concern into effective protection for Palestinians.

For readers in Iran and across West Asia, the film raises questions that extend well beyond Palestine. What happens when advanced technology is placed in the service of military domination? What becomes of human responsibility when decisions about life and death are mediated through databases, surveillance systems, algorithms and calculations of acceptable civilian casualties? And what does it mean when the suffering of another people becomes part of the ordinary administrative routines of warfare?

These are not merely questions about cinema or artificial intelligence. They concern the relationship between technology and power, the value assigned to human life, and the moral obligations of societies capable of inflicting immense destruction.

Behind the images of destruction

The title NAZA refers to a military acronym associated with estimates of expected civilian casualties during airstrikes. Its significance lies in the unsettling distance between the technical language of military planning and the human realities that such language can conceal.

A bomb striking a residential building is visible. The destruction of a hospital, the collapse of an apartment block and the death of children are events that can be photographed and transmitted across the world. Yet the decisions preceding those events remain largely hidden. Someone must identify a target, assemble intelligence, interpret information, determine the parameters of an operation and authorise the use of force. Somewhere in that chain, a judgment is made about the likely consequences for civilians.

NAZA directs our attention towards this hidden world. Through testimony from Israeli military and intelligence personnel, many speaking anonymously, the documentary examines aspects of the systems used to identify targets and conduct military operations in Gaza. The filmmakers have described their work as drawing upon investigative reporting and testimony from individuals familiar with these processes.

The film's significance lies in the questions it raises about institutional procedures and their human consequences. When military planners discuss anticipated casualties, what happens to the people represented by those figures? When a computer screen displays a target, does the operator see a family living in a home, or merely an entry in a system? When civilian deaths are incorporated into operational calculations, who determines the moral limits of that calculation?

The film takes us towards a fundamental question about modern warfare: how can the distance between the person authorising an attack and the person who dies beneath it become so enormous that responsibility appears to dissolve into a succession of technical and administrative decisions?

Destruction does not begin when a missile reaches its target. It begins earlier, within the political decisions, institutional assumptions and operational systems that make the attack possible.

Palestine's testimony, heard from within the system

For Palestinians, the destruction of homes, the loss of family members, displacement, surveillance and restrictions on movement are not new discoveries. Palestinian journalists, doctors, human rights defenders and ordinary citizens have documented these realities for decades. Their testimony has repeatedly described the consequences of occupation, blockade, settlement expansion and the denial of national self-determination.

Yet Palestinian testimony has frequently encountered a troubling imbalance in international public discourse. Palestinian accounts have often been subjected to demands for additional verification, qualification or political explanation, even when people are describing their own experiences. Their suffering has too often been treated as something that must first be established to the satisfaction of distant political authorities before it can command an adequate response.

An Israeli documentary examining military systems from within offers another point of entry for audiences who may previously have been reluctant to confront these questions. It does not create the Palestinian account, nor does it confer legitimacy upon experiences that Palestinians have described for generations. Rather, it opens a window into the institutional world from which some decisions affecting Palestinian lives are made.

That distinction matters. Palestinians do not need outsiders to discover their humanity on their behalf. Their lives possess value independently of whether their suffering is acknowledged by an Israeli filmmaker, a European audience or an international institution.

Nevertheless, testimony from within a military establishment can illuminate how institutional procedures operate, how decisions are framed and how individuals understand their participation in a larger system. NAZA opens another door into questions that Palestinian witnesses have long placed before the world. Its achievement should be understood in that context, without confusing the recognition of Palestinian suffering by new audiences with the much longer struggle of Palestinians themselves to make their voices heard.

The new machinery of an old political relationship

One of the film's most important arguments concerns the relationship between technological innovation and political continuity. Artificial intelligence, algorithmic analysis and surveillance systems may transform warfare, but they do not, by themselves, explain the political purposes for which these technologies are deployed.

Gaza did not become a site of military destruction in October 2023 without a history. The territory had endured a prolonged blockade, repeated military assaults and severe restrictions on movement long before the present catastrophe. The West Bank has experienced decades of occupation, settlement expansion and military control, while East Jerusalem remains central to the unresolved struggle over Palestinian land, rights and sovereignty.

The technological sophistication of contemporary warfare must therefore be understood against this longer history. A new generation of surveillance systems does not erase the political relationship between occupier and occupied. An algorithm does not resolve the question of whose security receives priority, whose freedom is restricted and whose life is exposed to danger.

Technology may change the speed, scale and methods through which military power is exercised. But a system can be technically sophisticated without being morally defensible. A calculation may be mathematically consistent without being ethically acceptable. An operation may be organised with extraordinary efficiency and still demand the most searching legal and moral scrutiny.

For readers across West Asia, this question resonates beyond Palestine. The region has experienced the consequences of military interventions, occupations, sanctions and strategic competition. The destruction of civilian infrastructure and the displacement of populations are not abstract subjects for societies that have lived through prolonged conflict.

NAZA invites us to consider whether technological progress, when separated from political accountability and ethical restraint, can make military power more efficient without making it more humane.

When human beings become administrative categories

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the film is the way technical language can distance decision-makers from the people affected by their decisions.

A family becomes a potential casualty figure. A residential building becomes a target location. A neighbourhood becomes an operational zone. A child's death becomes one component of a statistical estimate.

Once human beings are translated into administrative categories, it becomes easier to discuss their destruction without confronting its full meaning. The vocabulary of calculation can create an illusion of distance, as though the moral weight of an action diminishes when expressed through a technical formula.

But no terminology can change the reality beneath it. A child killed in an airstrike is not a statistical abstraction to the parents who have lost that child. A destroyed home is not simply damaged infrastructure to a family whose memories, possessions and sense of belonging have disappeared with it. A demolished neighbourhood is not merely a geographical alteration to the people whose community once existed there.

Behind every civilian casualty is a life with relationships, aspirations and an unwritten future. Behind every destroyed home is a history that cannot be reconstructed simply by replacing concrete and steel.

This is why the film should not be reduced to a morality tale about a few individuals. Its deeper challenge concerns the institutions within which decisions are made, the assumptions that govern those institutions and the political environment that determines what is considered acceptable.

Technology does not absolve its creators

There is a growing tendency to speak about artificial intelligence in warfare as though technology itself has acquired an independent will. When an automated system contributes to a devastating outcome, responsibility can become difficult to locate. Was it the software developer, the intelligence analyst, the commander or the political leadership?

These questions are complicated, but their complexity cannot become an excuse for evading responsibility.

Technological systems are designed by human beings and deployed within institutions that establish their purposes and limitations. Even when automated processes play a substantial role, decisions about the use of force remain embedded in political and military structures. The presence of sophisticated technology does not eliminate the obligations of those who design, authorise, supervise and use it.

International humanitarian law requires distinction between civilians and combatants, the application of proportionality and the taking of feasible precautions in attack. These obligations cannot simply be delegated to an algorithm or dissolved into a technical assessment.

The relevant question is not whether a machine can process information faster than a human being. It is whether the entire system preserves meaningful accountability for the consequences of its decisions.

A world in which the technology of destruction advances faster than the institutions of accountability is a world in which civilian populations remain dangerously exposed.

Why this film matters to Iran and West Asia

For an Iranian audience, NAZA can be approached as more than a documentary about Israeli military operations in Gaza. It raises questions about sovereignty, technological power, external intervention and the right of peoples to live without the constant threat of violence.

The Palestinian question occupies a distinctive place in West Asia's political history because it involves not only military conflict but also the continuing struggle of a people for national self-determination, territorial rights and political freedom. It has also become a test of the international community's willingness to apply humanitarian principles consistently, irrespective of the identity of the victims or the strategic interests of the states involved.

The film's focus on technology adds another dimension. Advanced surveillance and targeting capabilities are increasingly important to military establishments around the world. Their proliferation raises difficult questions about civilian protection, regional stability and the future of warfare.

Each conflict has its own history and circumstances, and the experiences of different countries should not be treated as identical. Yet the underlying principle is universal: technological power does not confer an unrestricted right to use force, and military superiority cannot substitute for compliance with international law.

For West Asia, the challenge is to ensure that the region's future is not determined solely by an escalating competition in military capabilities. Security cannot rest on the assumption that one population's vulnerability is the necessary price of another's protection. A sustainable regional order requires recognition of rights, meaningful political solutions, civilian protection and accountability for violations.

The experience of Palestine makes the consequences of failing to address these questions painfully visible.

Cinema as moral witness

The response to NAZA inside Israel is also significant. The documentary has faced strong criticism from Israeli political leaders and military representatives, who have challenged aspects of its portrayal and the reliability of its anonymous sources. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described it as “shocking incitement”, while the Israeli military has disputed aspects of the account.

These objections deserve to be considered alongside the filmmakers' stated methodology and the investigative reporting on which they say the documentary draws. Anonymous testimony can raise legitimate questions about verification, and a serious assessment must distinguish between what the evidence establishes, what it suggests and what remains contested.

But disagreement about a film's evidence should not obscure the importance of protecting artistic freedom and the ability to question military institutions. The reported calls for consequences against the filmmakers, including revocation of their citizenship, raise questions about the space available for dissent in Israel.

The fact that NAZA was made by Israeli filmmakers is important, but it should not be exaggerated into a story in which Israeli dissent becomes more significant than Palestinian testimony. The Palestinian struggle for recognition and freedom does not depend upon the emergence of dissenting Israeli voices. At the same time, those who challenge official narratives can contribute to a more searching examination of policies carried out in their name.

Cinema cannot, by itself, deliver justice to the people whose suffering it depicts. It cannot restore demolished homes, return those who have been killed or end an occupation. Its contribution lies elsewhere: in challenging indifference, exposing questions that demand answers and helping audiences recognise the human realities obscured by political and technical language.

The standing ovation at Venice was a remarkable moment of recognition, but the true measure of NAZA will not be the duration of applause or the prestige of its award. It will be the extent to which the film encourages audiences to confront questions that cannot be answered by admiration alone.

The final lesson of NAZA is that technological power must remain answerable to human responsibility. No algorithm can decide the value of a child's life. No military acronym can diminish the loss of a family. No calculation of anticipated casualties can, on its own, settle the moral or legal legitimacy of an attack.

When the language of war turns people into numbers, the task of cinema is to make us see the people again. And when the machinery of destruction becomes difficult to distinguish from the ordinary administration of power, the task of public conscience is to insist that responsibility cannot be automated, accountability cannot be postponed, and Palestinian lives must never be treated as though they matter less than anyone else's.