A film can be disturbing. It can be emotionally powerful. It can even be deeply persuasive. But an award-winning film is not a court of law. Applause at a film festival is not an operational investigation, and anonymous testimony does not exempt anyone from the obligation to prove grave accusations. That is precisely the test that NAZA must meet. In my view, it fails that test badly.
NAZA, created by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Shor, was screened at the Venice Film Festival and received the Special Jury Prize. The film relies on testimonies from dozens of Israeli intelligence personnel and soldiers, some of whom appear with concealed identities and distorted voices. It claims to expose the decision-making mechanisms behind Israeli strikes in Gaza. Its title is derived from the military concept of ‘collateral damage,’ the assessment of potential harm to civilians who are not the intended military target of an attack.
And that is where the fundamental distortion begins. The very existence of a collateral damage assessment is not evidence of indifference towards civilian life. Quite the opposite. Under the modern laws of armed conflict, estimating the potential harm to civilians is part of a military’s obligation to examine proportionality, distinguish between military objectives and civilians, and take precautions before launching an attack.
Specific decisions can and should be scrutinised. Intelligence can be questioned. Proportionality can be debated. Mistakes, when they occur, must be investigated. But it is intellectually dishonest to take the very existence of a mechanism designed to assess civilian risk and portray it as evidence that the mechanism exists in order to kill civilians.
Anyone who understands the operational process behind an air strike knows how dramatically circumstances can change within seconds. A target that has been approved may suddenly become unsuitable for attack because an uninvolved civilian appears in the area, movement is detected nearby, the target changes position, or intelligence becomes uncertain. Strikes are postponed. They are modified. Sometimes they are cancelled altogether.
These are not public relations anecdotes intended to sanitise the brutality of war. They are an integral part of the operational process. Any film seeking to argue that the Israeli military system is deliberately structured to kill civilians has a responsibility to confront that reality rather than simply edit it out of the picture.
I write this not merely as an outside observer. I served as both a soldier and a commander in the Israeli military. I know from personal experience the values within which Israeli soldiers and commanders are expected to operate.
The principle known in Israel as Tohar HaNeshek, the Purity of Arms, together with the sanctity of human life and the obligation to minimise harm to uninvolved civilians, is not a slogan invented for television cameras or press conferences. These principles are embedded in training, operational planning, briefings, and battlefield decision-making.
At times, they mean giving up an operational advantage. They can mean changing a planned course of action. They can mean assuming greater personal danger. There are circumstances in which Israeli soldiers and commanders knowingly place themselves at additional risk in order to reduce the danger to innocent civilians. Some have paid for that decision with their lives.
To portray such a military as an institution whose purpose is the deliberate murder of civilians is therefore more than criticism. It erases the enormous distinction between questioning a particular operational decision and constructing a sweeping indictment of the morality of thousands of soldiers and commanders.
The second major problem with NAZA is its methodology. The film relies heavily on individuals whose identities are concealed. There are circumstances in which anonymity is understandable, particularly when military or intelligence personnel are involved. But anonymity must increase the obligation to verify allegations, not diminish it.
Where are the documents? Where are the dates? What were the operational circumstances? What was the intelligence available at the time? What was the chain of command? What were the targeting considerations? What information was known before the strike rather than after it? And, crucially, was the party being accused given a meaningful opportunity to respond to specific allegations? The more serious the accusation, the higher the standard of evidence must be.
One of the allegations publicised around the film reportedly concerned the authorisation of a strike expected to cause an extraordinarily high number of civilian casualties. The Israel Defence Forces publicly rejected the allegation and sought access to the full film so that it could respond substantively. That distinction matters.
When filmmakers or media organisations seek to attribute a systematic policy of mass killing to an army, dramatic storytelling, effective editing, and anonymous testimony are not enough. Such an accusation requires evidence capable of independent examination.
There is also the broader problem of context. The Gaza war did not begin in a vacuum. It followed the 7 October 2023 attack, when Hamas and other armed groups crossed into Israel, murdered civilians, took hostages, and committed acts of extreme violence.
That fact does not give Israel a blank cheque. It does not absolve Israel of its obligations under international law. But it is indispensable context. A film that separates the use of military force from the threat that produced it risks transforming history into a one-dimensional narrative in which the response is shown in microscopic detail while the cause conveniently disappears beyond the edge of the screen.
Nor should every criticism of Israel automatically be dismissed as antisemitism. Serious criticism of an army, a government, or a military policy is legitimate in a democracy. But the reverse principle is equally important. Criticism does not acquire immunity from scrutiny merely because it is presented in the language of human rights.
If a film effectively accuses a state and its military of systematic killing, it must itself meet the highest possible standards of accuracy, transparency, and fairness.
The controversy surrounding NAZA in Israel has been intense. Culture Minister Miki Zohar called for consideration of measures against the filmmakers and asked Israel’s domestic security service to examine how sensitive material may have reached them and whether it was used unlawfully. Such reactions inevitably raise separate questions about freedom of expression and the limits of state action towards highly critical filmmakers.
But those questions must not be confused with the central issue. Whether a government response is proportionate is one question. Whether the accusations made in the film have been proved is another. One does not answer the other.
The same discipline must apply to allegations made against the filmmakers themselves. An anonymous claim was published in Israel suggesting that a source had received payment to exaggerate casualty figures. That claim has not, to date, been independently verified. Anyone criticising a film for relying on anonymous testimony cannot then treat an anonymous allegation against the film as established fact. Intellectual consistency requires the same evidentiary standard for both sides.
Indian readers have particular reason to pay attention to this debate. India understands better than many countries the tension between fighting terrorism and preserving the responsibilities of a democratic state in the use of force. It also understands the enormous gap that can exist between the complexity of an operational reality and the simplicity of an international headline.
In an age when a single image can become a global verdict within minutes, documentary filmmakers carry a responsibility no smaller than that of investigative journalists.
In the case of NAZA, I do not see merely another provocative work intended to stimulate legitimate debate. When a film uses concealed testimonies to create the impression that an entire military operates according to a policy of deliberate killing, while wrapping that allegation in the authority and aesthetics of documentary filmmaking without allowing the audience to fully examine the underlying evidence, it crosses a line.
Creative freedom does not confer immunity from responsibility. Nor does the language of documentary cinema transform an unproven accusation into truth merely because it is projected onto a large screen and greeted with applause.
A prize at the Venice Film Festival tells us that a jury admired the film. Applause tells us that an audience responded to it. Neither is evidence. Neither replaces documents, independently verifiable testimony, operational facts, nor a serious investigation.
When a cinematic narrative rapidly becomes an instrument for accusing Israel and its military of deliberate killing, the distinction between a compelling story and a proven fact is not some minor technicality. It is the entire issue.
For that reason, I do not regard NAZA as a legitimate film that should be recommended in the name of ‘balance’ or ‘open-mindedness.’ A production that makes accusations of this magnitude while relying extensively on concealed sources and that casts a sweeping stain over the values of the Israel Defence Forces and the morality of its soldiers and commanders should not be celebrated as an act of courage merely because its message is politically fashionable.
Israel can be criticised. Every military operation can be investigated. Governments and commanders can be asked difficult questions. But anyone seeking to turn a cinematic accusation into a moral verdict against an entire army and an entire country must produce evidence proportionate to the severity of that accusation.
Until then, applause is not evidence. Awards are not proof. And a film, however celebrated, does not turn allegations into truth.