The Israeli government is promoting an online film that imitates the style of NAZA, an award-winning documentary about Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza, in an apparent effort to counter the original film's findings. Israeli embassies have been sharing a link to a hastily made short film called NAZA: The Real Story, which uses anonymised interviews shot on Tel Aviv rooftops, a device also used in the real documentary.
NAZA was directed by the Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced with the Guardian. It won the special jury prize at the Venice international film festival in September and is being released in cinemas in more than 50 countries. Based on 24 interviews with Israeli military insiders, it describes how an AI-assisted surveillance apparatus was used to target Hamas operatives in the knowledge that many Palestinian civilians would also die. Spanish coverage has described the film as a triumph of collaboration between journalism and cinema, confronting Israeli society with testimony from within its own military.
The rival film's website, nazadocumentary.com, was registered six days after the Venice premiere. It initially presented itself as a promotional page for the real documentary, naming Abraham and Szor as directors and altering the official synopsis to remove the reference to Palestinian civilian deaths. It has since become a platform for the counter-film, which claims Israel has the "most moral army in the world". A viewer counter showing more than 42 million views appears implausible: the film's YouTube page lists about 30,000. A technical analysis suggested the counter may reflect website requests, by people or bots, rather than actual viewings. The film's maker, Ariel Averbuch, an Israeli lawyer and army reservist, called it an "offensive move" but said he did not know the source of the figure. The Israeli embassy to the US said the foreign ministry was not involved in production and only wished to amplify the creators' message. The government has nonetheless awarded the film-makers a certificate of appreciation. A Guardian spokesperson called the site a "brazen attempt to mislead audiences".
The campaign comes amid a wider backlash against Abraham and Szor. Israel's culture ministry has opened an investigation and called for them to be stripped of citizenship, accusing them of treason. The military's chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has promised to use "every tool at our disposal", and the army issued a 10-page rebuttal. Protesters gathered outside the home of Szor's parents, a mural showed the film-makers in gun sights, and a far-right activist said he was raising funds to "chase" Abraham. Producer James Wilson said the team had expected displeasure but not such aggression.
The episode matters because it shows how the dispute over Israel's conduct in Gaza, where more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Guardian's account and where a UN commission has described the campaign as genocide, is now being fought through film, online platforms and legal threats as well as in political arenas. NAZA will be free to watch on the Guardian's website from late November.