Directors

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday ‌to pass a law to revoke the citizenship of anyone who defames Israel’s soldiers, his latest threat against the Israeli directors of “NAZA,” a documentary about soldiers’ killing of Gaza ​civilians.

Directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, NAZA alleges that mass civilian deaths were routinely built into Israeli targeting decisions in Gaza, something Netanyahu and the military reject.

The film, which won a major prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, takes its title from an Israeli military term for expected “collateral casualties” and is built around anonymous interviews with intelligence officers and soldiers.

It has drawn a backlash in Israel, with ‌the military examining potential ‌legal action against those involved in it. But ​it ‌has ⁠also ​played into ⁠the charged political atmosphere ahead of Israel’s October 27 election, which public opinion polls show Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition could lose.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu accused some of his election rivals of failing to take a tough stand against the documentary, saying this made them unfit for office. And on Wednesday, he pledged to advance two bills that he said aimed at addressing the “immense damage” done to ⁠Israeli soldiers.

“The first, to revoke the citizenship of anyone ‌who defames (Israeli) soldiers, and the second ‌to hit them in their pockets and increase ​the statutory damages for defamation they ‌can be sued for by 20 times,” Netanyahu said in a social ‌media video.

“We will hit them both in their pockets and in their citizenship, as their place is not with us.”

Netanyahu cited three incidents in proposing the bills: “the recent film NAZA which portrayed (Israeli) officers and soldiers as war criminals“; 2025 remarks ‌by left-wing ex-general turned politician Yair Golan that “a sane country does not kill children as a hobby“; and a ⁠military legal officer’s ⁠2024 leak of a video showing soldiers abusing a Gaza detainee.

Reuters could not immediately reach the NAZA filmmakers for comment.

In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a law that permits stripping citizenship from Israelis who carry out actions that constitute a breach of trust against the state. Any new legislation would likely face similar court challenges.

The NAZA filmmakers say they believe it is important that Israelis watch the documentary and grapple with the narrative it presents.

Gaza health authorities say more than 73,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign that has left much of ​Gaza in ruins.

The war was ​triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli tallies.

LONDON: Film festivals and filmmakers around the world have rallied around the directors of the Gaza documentary “NAZA,” after an Israeli minister accused them of treason and threatened to revoke their citizenship.

Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor have faced mounting criticism from officials in Israel since their documentary, which documents Israeli military operations in Gaza, and in particular the killing of civilians, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival at the weekend.

Israel’s minister of culture and sports, Miki Zohar, said he would “act immediately” to revoke the citizenship of the filmmakers, accusing them of “treason against the state.”

The film, produced by The Guardian newspaper, features testimonies from 24 Israeli military and intelligence personnel about the use of AI-powered targeting systems in Gaza. It builds on investigations published by Israeli media outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, as well as Guardian news reports.

The threats against the directors prompted a broad response from the international film community, with the directors of the Telluride, Locarno, Berlin and San Sebastian film festivals among those expressing support.

Julie Huntsinger, artistic director of the Telluride Film Festival, said that threatening the filmmakers’ citizenship was “unacceptable” and that the issue “should be condemned by any thinking human.”

The Berlin International Film Festival’s director, Tricia Tuttle, said artists must be free to examine events critically, and argued that in a democratic society the response to films should be “dialogue and scrutiny, not intimidation or punishment by the state.”

More than 1,500 Israeli filmmakers signed a petition backing Abraham and Szor, and rejecting the accusation that they sought to damage Israel’s international reputation. The petition warned that the campaign against them was moving toward rhetoric that could effectively sanction violence and pose a threat to their lives.

Abraham and Szor won an Oscar last year for their documentary “No Other Land”, made in partnership with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, which examined Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military has rejected claims “NAZA” makes about its operations, saying they were based on anonymous sources that could not be independently verified.