Pushback on the the movie “NAZA”

About ten days ago I reported on the first public showing of the anti-Israel film “NAZA,” made by two Israelis. Its premise was the IDF had, during the Gaza war, engaged in the deliberate targeting of civilians using AI, not caring about how many civilians they killed and, in fact, killing as many as possible (the “genocide” trope). The movie apparently used information from 24 anonymous IDF sources, and showing of the movie has been highly restricted. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether it had been shown beyond the Venice Film Festival, where it got  not only a prize but a standing ovation that was 24½ minutes long: the longest in the history of the festival. Grok now tells me that it’s been shown at a festival in Bologna as well, and there are plans for a wider release. But most people haven’t seen it, including the IDF.  Some of its approbation comes from the fact that it was directed by two Israelis, who, of course, couldn’t possibly be showing stuff that was wrong or distorted.

Nevertheless, you can tell a lot about the movie’s premise from this short , 83-second trailer, which has English subtitles. And some of the film’s contents have leaked.

The premise is that there was an IDF program to deliberately kill civilians, whether directly or as “collateral damage” (the meaning of the word “Naza”), and in some strikes up to 500 Gazan civilians were killed.  The video by Natasha Hausdorff and the two articles in the Times of Israel below vigorously dispute this allegation, though you can dismiss them, if you wish, because those sources are either Israeli or sympathetic to Israel.  But before you join the Stalinesque-wave of applause for NAZA (remember from The Gulag Archipelago that the first person who stopped applauding for the Russian leader was arrested), hear them out.

The 26-minute take by Hausdorff, who hasn’t seen the movie, is based on what has been made public about the movie and its trailer. She clearly explains the rule of proportionality as obeyed by the IDF and the ways the IDF warned civilians of imminent attacks.  NAZA apparently ignores Hausdorff’s point: estimating “collateral damage” before a strike is a legal obligation, not a nefarious exercise. As she says:

“And what the filmmakers do is present the modeling of incidental harm to a lay audience as though it were some cold Israeli invention devised for the purpose of justifying slaughter. Well, it isn’t an Israeli invention—it’s the law. And it’s precisely intended  to minimize excessive harm to civilians. Pre-strike collateral damage estimation is the standard practice in every law-abiding Western military—that includes Americans and NATO forces. It’s the procedural tool that compels a commander to confront the presence of non-combatants before a weapon is ever released.”

She goes on to explain what kind of civilian assessment and damage do and do not constitute war crimes. As for the “death of 500 civilians” accusation in NAZA, it’s been strongly denied by the IDF; indeed, no attack was approved to eliminate a Hamas commander, however powerful he be, that would kill more than 100 civilians.  Hausdorff also denies that decisions about where and who are attacked by the IDF are made by machines rather than humans; here the IDF has already published its protocol, which involves three different groups of people.

As for the anonymous IDF souces, Hausdorff avers that, “From an evidential standpoint, these accounts are unverified in every respect that actually matters. We don’t know who these individuals are. We don’t know what roles they had. And we don’t know they are who the filmmakers say they are.” This means that neither Israel nor anybody else can establish whether the accounts are true.

Second, this Times of Israel by Sarit Zehavi (click to read) also casts strong doubt on the film’s premise, for Zehavi, who was willing to be interviewed but wasn’t asked, helped construct the very system of estimating civilian casualties. (She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli IDF reserve.) Click the headline to read.

An excerpt:

The creators of the recent documentary, “NAZA,” about “Naza” (a Hebrew military acronym for Nezek Agavi – collateral damage) did not have to work too hard to discover the truth.

They could have simply interviewed me. I would have stood in front of the camera, without hiding my identity, on the roof of my house nine kilometers (5.6 miles) from Lebanon, where we endured endless barrages of rockets, and explained the reality on the ground.

A little less than 20 years ago, I was one of the founders of the unit within the IDF that deals with warning populations on the other side of enemy lines and preserving civilian lives.

We built the processes that define how to issue evacuation warnings, and how to track evacuations. I was personally involved in formulating target approval processes and operational discussions.

If they had spoken with me, I would have explained that the chart shown at the beginning of the film’s promotional material is not a “killing chart,” but rather a planning chart for a target identified as being used by Hamas.

Its purpose is to determine whether to strike at all, who in the command echelon is authorized to approve the strike, with what munitions, and under what conditions. In stark contrast to the way it is presented in the promotional material, when the words “Naza 500 – collateral damage estimated at 500” appear in the approval process, it means that action must be taken to reduce the collateral damage.

There are a variety of ways to do this, such as issuing an evacuation warning, using precision munitions, or canceling the strike entirely. Noting the collateral damage on the target sheet does not signify an intention to kill civilians or commit “genocide”; it is intended, first and foremost, to prevent civilian deaths.

Our enemies, both Hamas and Hezbollah, deliberately place their rockets and headquarters in the heart of civilian areas, in tunnels under Beirut or in high-rise residential buildings in southern Lebanon. Hamas in Gaza does the same, operating in civilian areas and using children as human shields. They do this on the working assumption that if Israel strikes without warning, hundreds of civilians will be killed. That is exactly their goal. But Israel chooses differently: there are hundreds of soldiers and officers in the IDF whose sole role is protecting civilians in enemy territory. That is what they think about from the moment they wake up in the morning.

I would have expected a serious examination of this subject to include the perspective of former IDF personnel, like me, as well as serving soldiers and officers who are familiar with these procedures and could explain the professional meaning of collateral-damage assessments. Based on the promotional materials I have seen, that perspective is absent.

The promo for the film claims that the IDF “never checks the number of civilians killed.”

The truth is that checking the exact number of casualties in enemy territory in real time is a complex and nearly impossible task. This is exactly why the collateral damage assessment process takes into account factors such as the size of the structure and the estimated number of civilians routinely in its vicinity.

. . .According to IDF officials quoted in the Israeli media, the filmmakers did not seek the military’s response before the film was released, and the IDF learned of its claims through the media. The IDF spokesperson later publicly asked to view the full documentary in order to respond to its allegations. If the filmmakers, both of them investigative journalists, have declined to disclose their film or findings to the IDF, that would be contrary to basic journalistic ethics.

Without knowing more about the film’s anonymous sources, it is impossible to know what roles the interviewees held within the system, and whether their accounts, assuming they are authentic, are even relevant to understanding the chain of approvals and actions taken prior to striking a target.

The promotional materials released so far present the story from a very narrow angle: they rely on anonymous sources whose level of involvement, rank, and understanding of the process are unclear, while completely omitting the experts who built these systems with one goal: preserving human life. There are such experts. I was one of them.

The article below by Omer Shem Tov is based on an op-ed he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. It’s not all that germane to the film but I’m throwing in the links here for information.

Shem Tov was a hostage kidnapped on October 7, and recounts the lengths Israel went to not to kill him by accident:

Shem Tov, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival near the Gaza border, recounted an instance when the mother of one of his captors received a phone call from the IDF warning her of an imminent airstrike.

“Hamas knew where I was and left me to die. Israel didn’t know my location, but it knew where my captor’s mother was and called to make sure she wasn’t killed accidentally,” he wrote. “There I was — kidnapped, starved and tortured by her son — while my army was trying to keep his mother alive.”

He said his captors in Gaza celebrated death and destruction on both sides: “For Hamas, destruction itself could be victory. As long as there was death on either side, Hamas could win.”

Shem Tov said that “Israel desperately wanted me home. But not at any price. There were Palestinian civilians between Israel and me. So Israel dropped leaflets, sent messages, made phone calls and ordered evacuations. It tried to minimize NAZA, or collateral damage.”

. . The freed hostage suggested that Israel “paid a price” for its efforts to reduce civilian casualties: “They gave Hamas time. They exposed Israeli soldiers to greater danger. And they left hostages like me waiting longer.”

“If Israel had cared less about NAZA, perhaps I would have come home sooner,” he added. “Fewer Israeli soldiers might have died. Fewer hostages might have died. But more Palestinians would have.”

Shem Tov wrote that he is troubled by reports about the documentary film, which he notes that he also hasn’t seen in full.

“In Venice, the film received a standing ovation that lasted more than 24 minutes,” he said. “As a former hostage, those minutes felt like a shower of knives. Not because the film shows Palestinian suffering, which is real and deserves to be seen. What hurts is that the film, as it has been reported, doesn’t seem to see me.”

The former captive said that to the filmmakers, “perhaps I am NAZA too. Collateral damage. A Jewish hostage who could have been left to rot in a Hamas tunnel, or murdered alongside my friends at Nova, because fighting to free me, and to protect Israelis from the people who did this, is itself treated as morally suspect.”

The lengths that Israel went to to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties—the dropping of leaflets, the phone calls to civilians in buildings scheduled for bombing, the “knock on the door”—an innocuous bomb dropped whose noise would alert people to evacuate—and the announcement of “safe areas” for evacuation—all this has been announced publicly and not contested, even by the New York Times. And it gives the lie to the idea that the IDF wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible. If they really wanted to perpetrate a genocide, why the delivery of food and polio vaccine to Gaza? Why these warnings? Why no bombing of the West Bank? What army engaged in a war has ever taken these precautions? And now this film, which apparently stimulates huge approbation by Israel- and Jew-haters everywhere.

I never even thought much about anti-semitism before October 7 three years ago, but now that it’s apparently stimulated a huge outpouring of belief in Big Lies, like the Genocide Myth, I have no choice but to conclude that antisemitism is ubiquitous, and simply was repressed until the Hamas attack gave it an excuse to emerge.

No, it’s not all about Netanyahu (Israel will be hated no matter who becomes Prime Minister), and no, it’s not all about Zionism (“Zionist” has become a euphemism for “Jew”). It’s about hatred of Jews, pure and simple. As I’m a nonbelieving Jew and never banged on about antisemitism before October 7, I am confident in these conclusions. You will never find a purveyor of the Genocide Lie who will admit that they’re wrong, but the evidence shows they are wrong. And the makers of NAZA, and those who so fervently applaud that film, also perpetuate the Big Lie.  As does the British Government with its chowderheaded boycott of Jewish products in false hopes that it will bring about the impossible: a “two-state solution.” I agree with Bill Maher that those who spread the Genocide Lie are at the same time spreading antisemitism.

There are but 16 million Jews in the world, with about half of them in Israel, yet that tiny country, the only democracy in the Middle East, and a the only place where women, gays, and ethnic minorities have equal rights, seems to be the focus of the world’s damnation.  The explanation is clear.