Composed of nighttime rooftop interviews with disguised Israeli soldiers, the documentary has those committing war crimes explain their orders and the methods by which they’re carried out. The irksome controversy over “No Other Land” upon winning both the Berlinale Documentary prize and the Academy Award was never really about the film. It was hardly the first strong documentary to call attention to Israel’s official policy of ethnic cleansing, and there were no revelations to be had.
But coming just four months after the October 7th Hamas attack, tensions were high, misinformation was rife, and Israel’s decades-long conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism had burrowed deep into the Western psyche. Simplistic media pieces marveled that Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers were working together, and film festivals claiming “not to take sides” were able to hide behind their programming and have it both ways. The distance between then and now is saturated with the blood of more than 73,000 people, though casualty figures fail to account for the deliberate infliction of trauma on those who survive.
This is the space that “Naza” seeks to fill, and in its systematic, neutral-toned way of conveying information about Israel’s policy-driven perpetration of genocidal war crimes, it’s a more effective and urgent documentary than “No Other Land.” It also makes sense that it’s directed by only the Israeli half of that film’s directing team, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who have assumed the responsibility of revealing their government’s hidden activities in a way that would have been impossible had their fellow filmmakers joined them. The setup is simple and remarkably effective: Over the past three years, they filmed Abraham talking to members of the Israeli military elite at night, on Tel Aviv rooftops. Each of the 24 service members is seen in obscured profile, their voices modified to make identification impossible.
Asked about their duties, they describe in detail, frequently using sketchpads, how they executed their orders in Gaza. Some were involved in surveillance, several were guiding lethal drones from the safety of their Tel Aviv headquarters, and others were on the ground. All participated in erasing not just the human presence in Gaza, but the buildings themselves.
This erasure of human costs is not a policy that originated with Benjamin Netanyahu: For decades, the Israeli government has stocked its jails and morgues with Arab men in order to use them as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges. Six Israelis for 291 Syrians; one dead IDF soldier for 65 prisoners and 40 bodies; one Israeli hostage for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. The message, disseminated not just within Israel but among the diaspora, is that one Israeli, alive or dead, is worth untold numbers of Arabs.
Understanding that this is policy is crucial for comprehending how Israeli soldiers are expected to dutifully erase entire villages without questioning orders. By saying “200 naza” rather than “200 non-combattants killed,” the dehumanization process is handily condensed to four letters. And yet, despite being miles away from the drone attacks, the soldiers directing the strikes hear everything.
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