NAZA: What 24 Israeli Whistleblowers Say About AI Targeting in Gaza

NAZA is a documentary about the systems behind Israel’s air campaign in Gaza, told through protected testimony from 24 Israeli military and intelligence personnel. Premiering in the main competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on 10 September 2026, it frames those accounts as evidence that civilian casualties were not simply accidental consequences of individual strikes, but were incorporated into operational decisions. That is the film’s argument and its sources’ allegation—not a court finding. 12

What the title means

The title is presented as an Israeli military term for the number of expected “collateral casualties” in an air strike. That meaning matters because NAZA is less concerned with a single incident than with how projected civilian deaths were allegedly assessed alongside target selection. 1

The film was shot on Tel Aviv rooftops at night and examines the personnel, technology and decision-making behind the Gaza campaign, according to the festival synopsis reported by Reuters and AP. 23

What the 24 insiders describe

The interviewees appear anonymously, with their identities protected. Their accounts describe AI-supported intelligence and targeting processes, including surveillance and phone-data practices used to identify and track people for potential strikes. They also describe limited human review in parts of the process and say predicted civilian casualties could be entered into calculations before strikes were approved. 16

The essential distinction is important: the documentary presents insider testimony about how these systems operated. It does not itself establish criminal liability, and the allegations have not been presented here as judicially adjudicated facts.

The reporting context: AI, surveillance and targeting

The film arrives after investigative reporting by +972 Magazine and Local Call on an alleged Israeli AI system called “Lavender.” That reporting said the system was used to identify large numbers of Palestinians as suspected militants for possible assassination and that human oversight and civilian-casualty constraints were permissive in the early stages of the war. 3

NAZA translates this broader reporting into a feature documentary built around first-person testimony. Its focus is not whether AI acted independently, but how people allegedly used automated or AI-assisted outputs within a military chain of decision-making.

Who made NAZA

Israeli journalists and filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor directed NAZA. Both were among the directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. Available reporting identifies The Guardian as a producer of the new film. 235

The supplied reporting does not provide a fully consistent, independently verified list of all producing and executive-producing credits, so it is more accurate not to infer a complete credit list from partial reports.

Why its Venice premiere matters

NAZA was added to Venice’s main competition as the only documentary among 21 contenders for the Golden Lion. 23 It followed the 2025 Venice competition film The Voice of Hind Rajab, Kaouther Ben Hania’s dramatized reconstruction of the failed effort to rescue five-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza City. 5

The two films take markedly different approaches. The Voice of Hind Rajab centers a specific family tragedy and the emergency call surrounding it; NAZA investigates the alleged military systems and policies that its makers say shaped a much wider campaign.

The film’s challenge to Israel’s account

Abraham and Szor characterize the conduct described in NAZA as calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians rather than isolated mistakes. 5 That position directly conflicts with Israel’s longstanding public position that it does not deliberately target civilians and seeks to limit civilian harm while fighting Hamas; Reuters reported that the documentary challenges the official account of the war. 1

The strongest way to read NAZA is therefore as an evidence-driven intervention in a contested public record: it uses insider accounts to argue that surveillance, automated target generation and civilian-harm estimates should be examined together, rather than as separate technical or tactical questions. The available sources support that core argument, but do not provide enough substantiated material to make broader claims here about sanctions, press access or the war’s full humanitarian and political context.