Image Credits: Courtesy of Naza/The Guardian
The final image of the new film from the Israeli half behind the Oscar award-winning documentary “No Other Land” (2024) is the sentence “Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is still ongoing.” over a black screen. The use of the term “civilians” here is a double-edged sword. The title of the film, “Naza,” is the term the Israeli military uses to refer to Palestinians who are not direct military targets deemed acceptable for Israeli soldiers to murder while conducting military operations. The number of “Naza” deemed acceptable to kill can number anywhere from the tens to the hundreds per Israeli individual. They do not use the term “civilian,” as the Israeli state publicly believes that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza.” The use of “civilian” by filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor is a clear statement of humanization. At the same time, the scope of the term “civilian” is mired in the baggage of liberal Zionism. The apartheid that defines the Israeli state, the same apartheid Abraham and Szor have dedicated much of their journalistic careers to fighting, gets applied to who is considered a human being in Gaza (women, children, the elderly) and who is not (the men who fight back).
This is just one of the dozens of complexities, contradictions and difficulties wrapped up within a terrifyingly blunt and minimalist masterpiece of journalism. “Naza” screened as part of the 64th New York Film Festival, hosting the documentary for its US premiere. The film consists of 24 interviews with higher-ups within the Israeli military, conducted anonymously atop the nighttime rooftops of Tel Aviv. The officials calmly break down the ins and outs of the genocide: constructing diagrams of AI interfaces used to bomb entire city blocks, elaborating on how the morally acceptable ratio of “Naza” to kill was often left in the hands of algorithms (which Abraham exposed as being traced back to US-based companies such as Microsoft through his work in +927 magazine). All the while, Abraham intercuts his interviews with voyeuristic looks into the windows of average Israelis: doing yoga, watching Netflix, taking office calls, all while only 60km away, Gaza is swallowed by death and brutality. Often, Abraham will ask his subjects what they felt at the time as they recount their war crimes. Some say they don’t like to think about it; others dismiss it as a means to a just end, but all express an awareness that what they are participating in is a genocide.
While the bare documentation of how Israel’s genocide against Palestinians is being performed, straight from the lips of its architects, has already drawn Abraham and Szor the ire of the Israeli government, their interviews don’t exactly reveal new information beyond the technical. The same banality of evil that Hannah Arendt wrote on when visiting Jerusalem in 1963 to report on the trial of Nazi genocider Adolf Eichmann is felt through the testimonies of IDF officials, but to anyone who lives outside of Israel’s bubble, this glib admittance of ethnic cleansing is something you’re already familiar with if you’ve had access to social media for the last three years. Ultimately, these are things said in the dark, with the names, faces and voices of the guilty hidden in an act of distancing mercy that also unintentionally muffles what they are admitting to.
A far more brutal indictment, however, happens when the camera leaves Abraham and his interviewees. Tel Aviv is depicted as a techno-fascist dystopia filled with disinterested gentrifiers, a Brooklyn LARP experience built atop rivers of blood and fields of bones. Ominous security cameras dot the sides of trendy high-rises, metal gates are pulled over chic balconies as the sun goes down, restaurantgoers and rideshare patrons stop dead in their tracks as an air raid siren wails down the busy street. As state propaganda blares through the flatscreens seen through each window, the imperial boomerang swinging back on Israel is displayed in full force, and the culture of fear needed to maintain an apartheid society is nakedly exposed. Even as they give their anonymous answers in a place where no outsiders can hear, Abraham’s interviewees flinch at every passing airplane and look over their shoulder every time the wind blows. They admit to holding back answers, even with their identities completely scrubbed, because despite the comfort apartheid awards Israelis they are still conditioned to feel at the mercy of the state. The decisive framing and editing creates a tone of fascist panic that makes it clear Israel is crumbling from the inside.
The trouble with “Naza” comes from the shadow of “No Other Land.” The latter was made with the collaboration of Palestinian journalists Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, while “Naza” is a solely Israeli work. Its absence of Palestinian voice, save for a crushing montage the film ends on, is felt throughout and becomes an elephant in the room even beyond the borders of “Naza” itself. It’s not a fault that can be held against Abraham or Szor: in order for “Naza” to work, it needed to be a solely Israeli production, as it creates an atmosphere of trust between Abraham and his subjects that charms the heinous truth out of them. However, as a result of that insider bond, there is a noticeable lack of rage at the colonial machine that felt present in “No Other Land.” While it’s clear in “Naza” that Abraham and Szor have grown far less fond of Israel and Israelis since “No Other Land” was made, the revelations Abraham draws out feel made for an audience that is encountering a realization of Israel’s cultural sociopathy for the first time. An outsider’s perspective, one that has only ever known the sharp end of that cultural sociopathy and never had to unlearn it themselves, feels missed for what unheard aspects of genocide and apartheid it could expose a larger audience to.
Regardless of its perspective, “Naza” stands as one of the most important works of journalism of the 21st century simply for what it catalogues. It’s easy to see why it has earned Abraham and Szor the violent scrutiny of their fellow countrymen and threats of rescinded citizenship from their representatives. It will undoubtedly be used as evidence should Israel ever be held legally accountable for its crimes. But the hardest truth “Naza” introduces into the conversation is the possibility that this may never come. The strongest comparison point for the documentary remains Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” However, as Arendt was writing on Eichmann’s “show trial,” Nazis guilty of the same crimes were spreading themselves across the world to live long, happy lives free of the blame reserved for a select few. Claude Lanzmann, whose brief appearance in “Naza” is one of the film’s most loaded moments, directed “Shoah” (1985) with similar intent as Abraham and Szor: to document the ins and outs of genocide through the direct testimony of those who were there, including that of the perpetrators. But Lanzmann, who unlike Abraham did not grant anonymity, revealed through his documentation that most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust walked away from their atrocities without losing any freedom, let alone any sleep at night. “Naza” singles out today’s Eichmanns for tomorrow’s trials; but once they hang, will anything truly be answered for?
Elijah Fischer is a senior majoring in English with minors in Journalism and Film Criticism. Af997636@wcupa.edu.