The Jewish Center of the Hamptons is calling on the Hamptons International Film Festival to cancel the screening of a documentary by Israeli filmmakers that the festival’s guide describes as detailing “the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
“NAZA,” which is scheduled to be screened on Saturday at the Sag Harbor Cinema and on Friday, Oct. 9, at the East Hampton Cinema, “diligently unmasks the strategy behind the operations of Israeli intelligence officers over the past three years,” according to the guide, and is “an urgent investigation into one of the most pressing issues of our time.”
The film features anonymous interviews with 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers. “Its subjects described factory-scale targeting, enabled by artificial intelligence, in which little effort was made to avoid enormous numbers of civilian casualties,” the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote of a screening she attended.
“NAZA” has angered Israeli officials. Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would “seek new laws allowing Israel to strip citizenship from people who ‘smear’ Israeli soldiers,” according to The Guardian newspaper, a co-producer of “NAZA.” Activists outside the house of the parents of one of the film’s directors called for the filmmakers’ execution, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“NAZA” is a Hebrew military acronym for “nezek agavi,” or collateral damage, civilian deaths, or property damage caused during military operations. “NAZA,” the film, premiered on Sept. 10 at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, winning the Special Jury Prize and reportedly receiving a record 25-minute standing ovation.
A group called East End Jews for Israel is planning to hold a rally outside the Sag Harbor Cinema on Saturday at 6 p.m. A flier for the rally says it is to protest the documentary, “which presents a biased and scurrilous picture of Israeli military forces in their attempt to eradicate Hamas,” the Palestinian Sunni Islamist organization and militant group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel in which at least 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others kidnapped. The United States, Israel, the European Union, and other countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization.
In an open letter to the film festival and “our East End neighbors” that was published as a full-page advertisement in last week’s issue of The Star, the Jewish Center’s officers, board of trustees, and clergy wrote that the film “rests entirely on twenty-four anonymous sources — faces altered, voices altered, identities concealed — whose claims cannot be verified by the festival, its jury, or its audience. Its account of the war is drawn from openly partisan outlets.”
“Not one Israeli official, military voice, or dissenting expert appears in its entire running time,” the open letter continues. “And yet the festival presents it under the label of documentary — a label that tells every viewer: This is verified fact.”
The authors of the letter also object to the placement of “NAZA” in HIFF’s Films of Conflict and Resolution program, which the festival guide states is “dedicated to showcasing films that deal with the complex issues and societal effects of war, violence, and injustice.” The program, which launched in 2000, “has been this festival’s conscience for more than twenty-five years,” according to the open letter, but “this year, on the most contested conflict of our time, it presents one narrative, unanswered, in a section whose very name promises resolution.”
The letter notes that “antisemitic incidents across New York have reached levels our grandparents hoped this country would never see. The East End is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the nation. A celebrated, award-eligible indictment of the Jewish state — unverifiable by design and unanswered by choice — does not enlighten this community. It divides it.”
The festival responded to the Jewish Center’s letter this week. The screenings will take place as scheduled, said Randy Mastro, co-chairman of the festival’s board. “We will once again screen documentary films that are controversial, even provocative,” he said, “but we will also present an expansive film program that includes diverse viewpoints.”
He said the festival will offer a panel discussion of media depictions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Sunday at 2 p.m. at LTV Studios in Wainscott. The panel will include John Spencer, a scholar, combat veteran, and expert on urban warfare including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Richard Behar, a journalist who has reported extensively on media coverage of Israel; Kim Snyder, an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker; Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian humanitarian and commentator who founded Project Unified Assistance and is a director of Realign for Palestine and a resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and Libby Lenkinski, founder and president of Albi, a fund supporting transformative storytelling about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We encourage all to attend this special event,” Mr. Mastro said, inviting the public to R.S.V.P. by emailing [email protected].
The programming has also been expanded to premiere “The Choice,” which is described as “about Israeli families grieving after October 7 who have drawn solace from the best-selling memoir of Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger,” and to include an encore screening of “Holding Liat,” which is “about the ordeal a hostage couple and their families endured after October 7.”
“The Hamptons International Film Festival is committed to creating a space for independent filmmakers to express themselves through film and conversation,” Mr. Mastro said, “and this year will be no exception.”
