Lidia Ravera, a day ago · I watched “Naza” last night. Sitting in an armchair at the Barberini cinema. Facing a large screen—very large, far larger than any of the people watching it. Perfect for enabling the miracle of identification, which is, after all, the function of the cinematic medium. A miracle that will never occur in front of small home screens. The theater was nearly full. There was absolute silence. High above the rooftops of the luminous (and pristine) city of Tel Aviv, shadowy figures with altered voices recount atrocities committed against the Palestinian people. They speak lightly. Or perhaps with a mere hint of bewilderment, they describe the normalization of the massacres Israel has carried out in the Strip since October 7, 2023. "Naza" (its assonance with "Nazi" is chilling) derives from the Hebrew words *nezek agavi*—meaning "collateral damage." Collateral damage: the thousands of children, women, and men killed without mercy. Without reason. Twenty-four people speak—military personnel and intelligence agents; they are the shadowy figures spilling their secrets in this 80-minute documentary. Some admit to feeling like gods—those who decide the deaths of others—recounting how they listened to the voices of Gazans on their mobile phones (all under Israeli surveillance). If a child said, "Dad is coming home," the bombs would be launched; "Dad" was a code word—he could be a Hamas operative, that "Dad"... How many civilians was it legitimate to kill in order to capture a suspected terrorist? There was a quota, but the limit was always exceeded. Certainly, there are charts; some share them without embarrassment. Some speak of video games. Some might ask themselves: "I still believe the Nazis represent evil, but then I wonder: what am I?" They are not heroes of the resistance or of conscientious objection, yet they take—and have taken—risks, despite their disguises. One leaves the cinema in silence, bearing the full weight of one’s own powerlessness. We are grateful to Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham—the two Israeli filmmakers—for the risks they run (and have already run with *No Other Land*): the risk of being eliminated, and the certainty of being marginalized. And persecuted.
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