When that overworked phrase was first used by philosopher Hannah Arendt, it described the blank persona of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Now, in NAZA, anonymised members of Israeli intelligence discuss their remote execution of the assault on Gaza. The comparison to Hitler’s Germany, while understandably controversial, is made by a subject themselves.
If they are banal, it is a modern, oddly familiar kind. These are articulate, middle-class millennials. They say they are leftwing and non-racist.
Put differently, they could be Guardian readers. And yes, one remarks, they have been conducting a genocide. The work of directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor is shattering.
But we have been shattered before by the firsthand accounts of people who carry out atrocities – sometimes called perpetrator cinema. In 2013, director Joshua Oppenheimer released The Act of Killing, an astonishing film involving members of 1960s right-wing Indonesian death squads. It was lavishly acclaimed.
Since then, it has only kept feeling painfully relevant. Before that, documentary wild card Errol Morris made Standard Operating Procedure, interviewing US soldiers who abused Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail. Edging into drama, you might even include Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, where the commandant of Auschwitz lives happily with his wife and children. (Glazer is an executive producer of NAZA, which is produced by the Guardian.) Questions gnaw through them all.
To begin: who is it that commits crimes against humanity? The answer can feel inconclusive. NAZA is filled with Tel Aviv high-fliers, some citing as justification the horrific attacks of October 7.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
