A scene from NAZA. The producers said the team had carried out scores of interviews with those with knowledge of IDF targeting and authorisation processes. Photograph: The Guardian
NAZA film-makers say they spoke to more than 100 sources about Israeli actions in Gaza
Team behind documentary push back against IDF attempt to discredit its exposure of military systems
The team behind the award-winning film NAZA, which details the Israeli military’s targeting policies in Gaza and its alleged acceptance of high numbers of civilian deaths, have revealed they spoke to more than 100 sources with knowledge of the military systems used in the war.
The disclosure came in response to an Israel Defense Forces statement seeking to discredit the documentary.
In its response, which the IDF said was based on statements made by the film-makers and a review made by a representative who had attended a viewing, the Israeli military claimed there were “substantial errors” in the film and that it had relied on interviews with two dozen intelligence and other troops who had only a partial picture of the target approval process.
At the centre of the IDF’s rebuttal was its often repeated claim that its rules of engagement explicitly distinguish between militants and civilians and prohibit deliberately targeting civilians, while requiring commanders to take steps to minimise civilian harm, claims that have long been challenged over the years by critics.
While acknowledging that it used AI to help recommend potential targets in Gaza, the IDF also said final decisions made on strikes, and the risk of civilian casualties, were signed off by officers.
The IDF also denied that it had approved, planned or carried out an attack anticipating 500 civilian casualties in pursuit of a single Hamas target.
The IDF statement follows previous efforts by Israeli politicians to dismiss NAZA – a military acronym euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that it expects will be killed in an airstrike – which have accompanied death threats against the film’s directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and calls by the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for them to be stripped of their Israeli citizenship.
It also echoed previous complaints by some Israeli critics – including journalists – that the film’s military sources were anonymised, despite the fact that source protection in media investigations is commonplace and regarded by much of the media as an ethical requirement.
“The film NAZA presents a distorted, misleading, and unrealistic picture of the IDF’s target planning and strike processes. The film’s narrative is based on fundamental factual errors stemming from a skewed and manipulative portrayal,” the statement added.
Responding to the IDF statement, the Guardian, which produced the film, disclosed further details of how the team had verified the allegations which involved scores of interviews with those with knowledge of IDF targeting and authorisation processes.
A spokesperson said: “The IDF’s attempt to portray the 24 participants in NAZAas junior-ranking officers involved only in the early stages of the targeting process is false.
“They include officers and soldiers who were involved in multiple stages of the targeting process in Gaza, including intelligence, operations and the final authorisation process.
People walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip. Photograph: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
“The process of assessing the credibility of the testimonies was rigorous. It included leaked classified documents, detailed verification of specific strikes and corroboration via a wider pool of confidential journalistic sources who did not appear on camera in the film.
“Over the past three years we have together interviewed more than 100 sources familiar with IDF systems used in the war in Gaza, including senior-ranking commanders directly involved in the authorisation of strikes.
“The Guardian stands fully behind the film, which builds on three years of detailed reporting by the Guardian and our partners. Several highly respected news organisations have subsequently confirmed the IDF’s use of AI-driven systems in the Gaza offensive and the loosening of safeguards to protect civilians, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press.”
While Netanyahu has claimed that Israeli military safeguards have led to one of the lowest civilian-combatant ratios in modern warfare, that has been challenged by the IDF’s own leaked casualty assessments, by the UN’s commission of inquiry in 2024 and research by NGOs including Action on Armed Violence.
The most moral army of the world, led by the most moral politicians of the most moral people (of settler colonials) in the world are not only responsible for the brutal genocide of many tens of thousands of Palestinians - living on their own territory - but has also a bloodsoken record of systematically murdering all the witnesses and all the messengers (such as journalists) of those monstrosities, whether of Jewish ethnicity or of Palestinian ethnicity.
Furthermore have all these most moral entities of the world a hit-record of systematically distort all the traces leading up to their monstrosities.
As I already indicated in earlier comments on this subject, both the aformentioned politicians, security services and the army of this settler colony on other people's land, did know a year before 10/7 - in great lengsth and painfully detailed, the exact blueprint of the tactics, that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, would employ during their 10/7 outbreak from the Gazan concentration camp.
As they they knew also in great detail, the motive behind the breakout from Gaza : making hostages, in order to be able to exchange those for Palestinian prisoners, that had been - without any effort of legal justification - taken hostage by the settler colonials.
Hamas did not for even a slight moment try to hide their tactics, because they exercised those tactics in the full open.
All the information had been gathered - through an extensive network of state of the art mass-surveillance equipment (including all revealing satellites) and from Palestinians, who had been blackmailed through a high variety of means - did confirm the plans that Hamas had wriiten down in a document, that had been in the possession of the settler colonial authorities.
What the most moral politicians of the world subsequently did during that year, before the Hamas operation took place, was to systematically design a plan, which had the central intentional objective, to firstly willingly have Hamas execute their plan and in the process to kill as much Jewish victims through te Hannibal directive.
In order to have that plan carried out succesfully, it was nessecary, to have NO patrolls running their watch along the iron wall on that specific day .
All the victims at the Jewish side had been taken into account by the most moral authorities of the world, long before the execution of the Hamas jailbreak : All those jewish victims were cinically sacrificed, in order to create a viable alibi, to have the Gazan population ethnically cleansed from Gaza by the final Nakbah, so to be able to finally found the mon-etnic Jewish state on Plalestinian territory.
During that spare year before the jailbreak of the resistance movement Hamas, the most moral politicians of the world had also planned meticulously how to control the narrative of everything that would happen at 10/7 :
World opinion had to be moved in to the right genocidal direction by way of horrific headlines, dominated by a carefully orchestrated web of agit-propaganda : fourty decapitated babies in magnetrons, a great number of mercilessly raped girls and women, brutally murdered afterwards together with the description of the notoriously corrupt ZAKA brigade, all too willing to make their contribution.
What the most moral government and the most moral military of the world and the most moral security services of the world did not tell that very same world, was, that the great many dead victims came from the grenades, fired towards them by AIF helicopter gunships and by grenades fired at the kibbutzes from IDF tanks.
All the people - from Jewish or non-Jewish etnicity - who are full of (rightful) admiration of the ultimate courage of the two documantary makers, will however know,that the final fate of those hero's, in all probability will be the death penalty.
After all, every military in the world that has been exposed as genocidal monstors, will have the conditional reflex, of wanting to destroy the messengers of those evidence of their crimes, as they had proven well in all the previous occasions where critiacal journalists had been executed without any hesitation or mercy.
Just keep in mind in this respect, that the highly courageous Jewish holocaust and genocide expert, Omer Bertow, who dared to speak out in public - not only against the Zionist genocide in Gaza, but spoke out as well - against political Zionism as an ideology, at this very moment is a political fugitive, on the run ans hiding abroad, for bloodthirsty orthodox colonists, threatening to take his life and possibly even the life of his loved ones.
We might as well expect, that Tel Aviv will try to destroy the Guardian – which had been so brave to assist the great docu-makers, with all the nitty gritty ground- and check work, that by definition, is so narrowly connected with proper and integer journalism.
We also have to pay tribute to the all too courageous IDF sergeant - Shalom Sheetrit - who gave his testimony at the Knesset, where he declared that on the very morning of the Hamas attack, his platoon had been ordered from above, to abstain (!) from the daily protocol of making an inspection-tour along their section of the Iron Wall, which that very morning had appeared to have been the very section (!), where Hamas entered through to the other side of the wall and took the exact number of hostages that they had annouinced in their "letter of intent" that had been in the possession of the most moral gouvernment and the most moral security services of the world...
