The film Naza is now on general release and has been shown in almost one hundred cinemas across the UK and, up until the present time, 25 countries worldwide.
The film makers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor both come from Tel Aviv and it appears that they have tapped into the community which they inhabit in order to get their interviews. In contrast, Who is Still Alive – Switzerland’s Oscar nomination this year is not made by a Palestinian film-maker but relies on the testimonies of Palestinian refugees from Gaza for the bulk of its material. Both approaches are valid and in the case of Naza, hearing the response of IDF operatives to simple questions carries a chilling and brutal reality.
This reality is brought home by the operatives being asked to draw basic plans of how they identified targets. Human beings are often denoted as dots or colours are used –as they are on weather maps– to indicate the density of occupation of buildings and rooms within buildings. The interviewees reveal candidly the clarity of planning of the IDF operations.
Euphemisms are used to disguise the true impact of the actions. For example, the term Naza means collateral damage. It quantifies the number of innocent civilians the IDF is prepared to kill in order to kill a Hamas operative. At one stage this number is stated to be 15 civilians to 1 Hamas operative but other testimonies suggested much higher ratios.
The term Naza does not differentiate between the age or sex of the victim. Women and children are not differentiated from men. According to one interviewee, this led at a very early stage to the IDF deciding on a policy of attacking family groups at night when the supposed Hamas operative was at home. Phones were tracked using AI to identify where people where and it was decided that the best chance of killing the target individual was when they were with their family. An AI program called Lavender was used to attempt to differentiate between a Hamas operative and a civilian. This program claimed an 85% success rate, so 15% of targets were incorrectly identified.
IDF spies and AI listened for key phrases, such as “Hello Daddy” to identify when the victim had returned home. It was openly admitted that these methods frequently led to mistaken murders – there was one example given of the Hamas operative leaving his phone at home when he left the apartment only to find his family murdered because of this.
In general, the interviewees appeared quietly calm and collected. It was unclear whether most of the interviewees were still members of the IDF. Although it appeared that some had left the IDF. In general, there was little sense of remorse in their answers to Abraham’s questions. They talked about intelligence gathering as though it was separate from the other aspects of the genocide. It was pointed out to one interviewee that intelligence gathering was the means facilitating the mass murder, a connection the interviewee seemed unhappy to acknowledge.
Other interviewees talked of the killing process. One example used was that the IDF would decide on a demarcation line, but none of the Palestinians would know where it was until the IDF started shooting them.
Snipers would shoot-down civilians desperate for food and forced to cross such demarcation zones, some would get the food and others would fall – largely determined by how fast they could run.
One IDF operative described the process as fun. “It was fun to be part of a successful mission,” he said. In general, the operatives took the line that the Palestinians were all culpable for the Hamas attacks on October 7th 2023 and therefore legitimate targets.
The common view appeared to be that they were following orders and that their superior officers knew better than they did about what must be done. They were clear that Hamas had to be wiped out, but when it was pointed out to one interviewee that using the Naza principle this would result in the extermination of the Palestinian people, he seemed confused and then accepted this mathematical probability. What came across was that the IDF was more likely to kill innocent children rather than Hamas operatives themselves.
These interviews were set against the backdrop of the Tel Aviv city-scape. There were shots of the mundane everyday lives of the people living there: watching TV, doing housework, being with their children. These shots were interspersed with scenes from the destroyed Gaza city.
There was limited use of graphic imagery until the final scene of the film where a father was trying, with his bare hands, to pull his wife and son from a bombed-out building. This contrasted strongly with the cold tones used by most of the interviewees and the clinical necessity they seemed to feel for the elimination of Palestinians from Gaza.
The interviewees had no problem identifying this as a genocide. One interviewee said that he was from a rich part of Tel Aviv where people didn’t hate the Palestinians but then agreed that he had been instrumental in the genocide. Another interviewee claimed pride in being a member of a crack unit given the task of widespread killings. I was only obeying orders, was his defence. This is the defence of mass murderers throughout history, whether it be: The Bombing of Dresden, the My Lai Massacre, the mass executions carried out in the Second World War, or the Holocaust itself, we must judge the actions as they truly are – coldly calculated mass-murder.
Naza is a well-constructed and moving account of how the consciousness of military personnel is shaped. In this case it is shaped towards a hatred of the Palestinians –all of them– and a desire for their elimination. It is clear that the Hamas attack of October 7th was used by the Israeli state as a pretext for their own “final solution” to the Gaza problem. This underscores the scale of the strategic error made by Hamas but much more clearly the scale of the Israeli lie that all Palestinians are equally culpable for Hamas’ behaviour –including children– and should all suffer equally the terrible consequences.
