‘NAZA’: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza
Our new film shows how Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians was a calculated and intentional act, through the testimonies of those responsible.
By Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

NAZA / The Guardian
Over the past three years, we conducted night-time interviews on the rooftops of Tel Aviv with 24 Israeli soldiers who played an active role in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Most of them were intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians.
Their testimonies form the basis of “NAZA,” a new documentary we directed — produced by The Guardian and James Wilson and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer — that premieres this evening at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
We interviewed these soldiers not because this was the only way to know what Israel has done in Gaza. Anyone who has seen the devastation in the Strip, listened to Gaza’s residents, or simply took Israeli leaders at their word should have recognized this truth years ago.
We made this film for one simple reason: We understood that testimonies from officers and soldiers in the army that annihilated Gaza — those who conducted the surveillance, who calculated how many innocent people were likely to be killed in each house, and who repeatedly gave the green light to bomb entire families — would make it even harder to deny the crimes. And that denial is part of what allows these crimes to continue until today.
This is a film about a system. It focuses on orders, policies, and patterns of operation, not deviations from them. The conclusion that we draw from the testimonies is clear: The mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was not a “tragic byproduct” of a war against Hamas, as it is commonly portrayed in Israel, but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act. This is why a UN commission, the world’s leading human rights groups, and Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars have described it as a genocide.

Relatives mourn over the body of 17-year-old Ibrahim al-Hash who was killed in an Israeli drone strike in Jabalia refugee camp, at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, September 2, 2026. (Yousef Zaanoun/Activestills)
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The film’s title, “NAZA,” which is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” is a critique of the way Israel portrays its killing of civilians — obscuring both the advance knowledge it has of how many people are likely to be killed in each strike, and the intent to destroy that has accompanied the military campaign from the outset.
One of the officers we interviewed describes how he was fully aware in real time of hundreds of cases in which families were going about their normal lives — a man talking to his wife, the sound of a TV show, prayer, a crying baby — and then he gave the clearance to bomb them. When asked why, he explained: “You understand that the objective is to destroy.”
Seen in this light, the presence of a person Israel deems an assassination target in a certain house becomes the “collateral” matter; indeed, in many cases, the target turned out not to have been present at all. The killing itself was the point.
A view into the darkness
The soldiers who appear in the film all agreed to speak on the condition that their identities be carefully concealed, due to fears that Israel might retaliate against them for exposing damning information. Some of their testimonies were so urgent and horrifying that we published them almost immediately in a series of investigative reports for +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian.
Most of the soldiers we interviewed belong to what is commonly referred to as Israel’s socioeconomic elite, and served mainly in prestigious intelligence units. Some were clear that they had participated in serious crimes, and hoped that speaking out would help to penetrate the walls of denial and justification and force the Israeli public to reckon with what the army was sent to do on their behalf. Others agreed to speak only after months of deliberation — whether out of guilt, shame, or even pride in what they regarded as their professional accomplishments.
Our film does not dwell on their motivations, which was a deliberate choice. It is concerned principally with the killing itself and what makes that killing possible. To spend too much time on the sources’ moral and political sentiments would risk shifting the center of gravity away from the victims, which is something we did not want to do.
Granting anonymity to people who, by their own accounts, took part in horrific crimes is not something we take lightly. But given the continued perpetration of these crimes, we felt an obligation to make their accounts public in the hope that it might contribute to efforts to bring the onslaught to an end. The soldiers’ testimonies also implicate a much larger system, for which the highest echelons of Israel’s political and military leadership bear ultimate responsibility. We hope the film can contribute toward accountability for Israel’s grave crimes and justice for their victims.

Mourners carry the remains of members of three families during a funeral for nearly 100 people, including 70 children, who were killed in Israeli attacks and recovered by Palestinian Civil Defense teams from beneath the rubble in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood on September 6, 2026. (Yousef Zaanoun/Activestills)
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But the film is not only a collection of soldiers’ testimonies. We also turned the camera lens to Tel Aviv and its residents at night, interrogating the city as a bubble in which ordinary life continues while Palestinians are being massacred only 60 kilometers away. Through our gaze at the city from which the war on Gaza is being managed, we tried to observe the mechanisms of conformity that enable such widespread indifference.
In doing so, we found ourselves asking questions that our grandparents’ generation asked — questions that people around the world have asked after learning about atrocities and genocides elsewhere: How can one group of human beings consent to the complete dehumanization of another? And what does a genocidal system look like from within?
In the coming years — perhaps in a post-Netanyahu era, if such an era comes to pass — parts of Israel’s liberal camp may seek to distance themselves from the crimes in Gaza and attribute them to the far-right government. Certainly, this government bears primary responsibility for the killing of more than 73,000 people, mostly civilians, in the wake of Hamas’ criminal massacres on October 7. Yet a significant amount of this killing was carried out by soldiers who came from the heart of Israel’s liberal camp: intelligence and Air Force officers serving in the military’s most prestigious units.
Air Force pilots might claim that they were simply following orders — that they received a set of coordinates, dropped the bomb, and returned home without knowing what they struck. Infantry soldiers will defend themselves by saying that they did not always know whom they were hitting, partly because of the fog of war. As questionable as these defenses may be, there can be no denying what intelligence personnel knew.
They witnessed with their own eyes and ears that the homes they were “incriminating” were filled with families. They knew that the vast “NAZA approvals” were not connected to targets of any significant military value. And yet they played their part in the machinery of death with virtually no acts of refusal or resistance.
The film shows what a killing system looks like when it is based on the notion that “there are no innocents in Gaza” — or, as it could be stated in intelligence terminology, “there is no NAZA in Gaza.” As such, the film will likely undermine the deniers, the sowers of doubt, and those who still feel comfortable living in the twilight zone between knowing and not knowing about what is happening 60 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.
The film premieres in Venice tonight and will soon come to New York before being distributed around the world. But it is also directed inward, toward Israeli society. It was filmed entirely at night, reflecting the profound darkness in which it was created and within which we live. But without an honest reckoning with what happened in the dark, none of us will be able to see the light.
October 7 war
Genocide
Gaza
Israeli army
International law
Palestinians
war crimes
Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem.
Rachel Szor is a filmmaker and cinematographer.
다큐멘터리 영화 및 기고문 <‘나자(NAZA)’ - 가자지구 내 이스라엘 살인 기계의 폭로>에 대한 요약과 평론입니다.
<요약>
유발 아브라함과 라헬 소르가 감독한 다큐멘터리 영화 <나자(NAZA)>는 가자지구 공격에 직접 참여했던 이스라엘 정보국 장교 등 군인 24명의 옥상 야간 인터뷰를 바탕으로 제작되었다
영화 제목인 <나자(NAZA)>는 히브리어로 ‘부수적 피해’를 뜻하는 약어다
제작진은 증언자의 동기나 개인적 고뇌보다는 ‘살인 행위와 이를 가능하게 만든 시스템’에 집중하며, 피해자들로부터 시선이 분산되는 것을 경계했다
<평론: 시스템화된 살인 기계와 안락한 방관의 이면>
<‘나자(NAZA)’>가 겨냥하는 폭로의 칼끝은 전선의 병사가 아닌, 차가운 콘크리트 빌딩과 모니터 뒤에 앉은 ‘기능적 인간’들을 향한다. 다큐멘터리는 군사 용어인 ‘부수적 피해’라는 기만적인 언어를 해체하고, 학살이 오류나 광기의 결과가 아니라 고도로 정밀하게 가동된 관료적 살인 시스템이었음을 드러낸다. 한 사람의 표적을 핑계 삼아 일가족 전체를 지워버리는 과정에서 표적의 실존 여부는 부차적이었으며, 파괴와 살해 자체가 본질적 목적이었다는 고백은 전쟁이라는 이름 뒤에 숨은 집단학살의 민낯을 가감 없이 보여준다.
이 텍스트에서 가장 주목할 지점은 ‘엘리트적 공모’와 ‘거리의 역설’에 대한 날카로운 통찰이다. 폭격 좌표를 승인한 주역들은 야만적인 광신도가 아니라, 이스라엘의 세련된 사회경제적 엘리트이자 자유주의적 진영에 속한 인물들이다. 작품은 전후 이들이 극우 정치권에 모든 책임을 전가하며 손을 털어내려는 위선을 단호하게 차단한다. 정보 요원들은 현장의 안개 속에 숨은 보병이나 기계적인 명령을 수행한 조종사와 달리, 화면을 통해 피해자들의 숨소리와 아기 울음소리를 실시간으로 듣고 보면서도 방아쇠를 당겼기 때문이다.
가자지구의 지옥도와 텔아비브의 평화로운 야경을 교차시키는 연출적 시선은 한나 아렌트가 말한 ‘악의 평범성’을 도시적 차원으로 확장한다. 60km라는 지리적 근접성에도 불구하고 타인의 완전한 비인간화에 동조하거나 침묵하는 사회적 메커니즘은, 과거 다른 대량 학살을 목도했던 인류가 품었던 질문을 다시금 던지게 만든다.
결국 <‘나자(NAZA)’>는 가해자의 입을 통해 기록된 체계적 범죄 보고서다. 군인들의 참회나 복잡한 내면을 변명거리로 소비하지 않고 학살의 시스템을 증명하는 물증으로 엄격히 제한한 연출적 태도는, 영화가 도덕적 면죄부가 아닌 역사적·사법적 단죄를 지향하고 있음을 명백히 보여준다. ‘가자에 무고한 이는 없다’는 국가적 기만 앞에서, 이 다큐멘터리는 알고도 외면했던 모든 이들의 안락한 황혼 지대를 무너뜨리는 뼈아픈 고발장이다.
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