A Hamptons International Film Festival presentation of “NAZA,” a documentary about the calculation by which Israel Defense Forces intelligence personnel approve strikes in Gaza that could kill or wound noncombatants as well as intended targets, is expected to be met by protests.
The film has come under fire from the highest levels of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for stripping the Israeli filmmakers’ citizenship. Opponents of the film, claiming that its premise is a harmful lie, have demanded that the festival cancel its two scheduled screenings. Its title, “NAZA,” is a Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage.” That term could be applied to the Israeli war effort itself, which is now close to entering its fourth year with little prospect for peace.
In contrast to the claims of the film’s opponents, independent reporting on Israeli military intelligence supports the film’s contentions. Noncombatant deaths and injuries have been no secret. Within a month of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack — in which some 1,400 Israelis were murdered or kidnapped and many others the subject of horrifying sexual violence — the I.D.F. was using artificial intelligence to help determine targets. The Israeli military also loosened rules concerning civilian casualties, including approving bombing houses where a single militant was suspected to be, even though many others could be harmed.
Widely agreed-upon figures have put the total fatalities in Gaza around 77,000. Sources linked to the Israeli government have said at least 22,000 Hamas members have been killed. However, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, the number is closer to 6,000. Getting closer to a real number, leaked information from an Israeli military intelligence database listed 8,900 Palestinian fighters as dead or likely dead as of May 2025. This indicated that 83 percent of the total killed by that time were noncombatants.
Firsthand observations from the people interviewed for “NAZA” add depth to reports initially published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, then in the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and, later, The Guardian newspaper, which co-produced the film. For obvious reasons, it was made under tight security because of the risk to confidential journalistic sources.
By featuring anonymous interviews with 24 intelligence officers and soldiers, what the filmmakers did was more powerful than present statistics alone — and more threatening to those who support Israel’s prosecution of the war. Moreover, arguing over a wartime calculation, rather than about the war itself, complicates a picture in which, nearly three years on, Israel’s punitive attacks in Gaza appear at least as much driven by a desire for vengeance as they are by security. It seems that the medium, much more than the message, is what really outrages its opponents.