Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, “NAZA” (2026)
Made over three years in Tel Aviv by directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, “NAZA” demonstrates how digital technologies and surveillance systems – especially cyber-surveillance systems – have become tools of genocide in the hands of the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against Palestinians in Gaza. The film ostensibly takes the form of interviews with 24 IDF soldiers and Unit 8200 intelligence officers, conducted by Abraham and filmed by Szor over many nights on Tel Aviv apartment block roof tops. All interviewees are shown as black silhouettes, their features and profiles obscured, and their voices distorted, so as to hide their identities while they recount how AI algorithms and systems, and mobile phone surveillance methods are used to determine the protocols and parameters for targeting and killing suspected Hamas fighters, the range of error allowed, and how these methods and protocols contribute to the mass slaughter of innocent civilians, in particular women and children. That these methods and protocols are easily adaptable for mass slaughter is demonstrated in the interviews, in which the soldiers and intel officers admit that these rules of engagement are used not only to target individuals, regardless of how many innocent people end up being taken down with them, but also to target entire neighbourhoods in northern Gaza to stop people from returning to their homes there.
The mind-blowing aspect of “NAZA” itself lies in how quickly and easily the genocidal nature of Israel is revealed in a small number of interviews with a small number of people working in two institutions of the Israeli state genocide project – the IDF and Unit 8200 – without the directors having to consult other Israelis working in government (either in its legislative, executive or judicial branches) or the country’s other military and security forces, let alone Palestinians themselves. This may say something about how much and how widespread the obsession with annihilating Palestinians has taken hold in Israeli society. At the same time, the interviewees seem anxious to justify their own complicity or to distance themselves by denying responsibility for their actions. Several interviewees seemed quite proud of their roles as willing participants in the genocide, while others claimed to be mere cogs or were just doing their duty in aiding the mass killings. Some interviewees admit to killing people and then going out with friends or having lunch with no qualms – presumably, those interviewees were able to sleep well at nights. One man goes so far as to (almost) compare himself with Nazi German soldiers in his actions, though even he can’t quite admit that he has committed evil deeds.
Interspersed with the interviews are scenes of civilian life in the apartment blocks – people are seen through windows watching television, cleaning tables or washing dishes, or practising yoga. The film increasingly draws parallels between these Tel Aviv civilians going about their daily lives and the Palestinians whose lives were snuffed out under AI programs like Lavender and the “Where’s Daddy?” mobile phone hacking / surveillance program, until the very end where a Palestinian man is going through a mound of rubble where a high-rise building once stood, calling out for his wife and children, and ending up weeping as his cries go unheard and people around him try to comfort him.
Understandably, given its very limited scope, the film raises various issues that go unanswered. Viewers get a glimpse of how Israeli mass media becomes a propaganda arm of the government, and how even the Shoah and the history of Tel Aviv (real or not) have been recruited as propaganda tools to brainwash and blind Israelis to what the government is doing in their name. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is shown at various points throughout the film as a major, if not chief, warmonger against the Palestinians but the depth of the genocidal mindset amongst the interviewees and their colleagues in the IDF and Unit 8200 – and these are highly intelligent individuals who have benefited from the best education afforded them by their parents and Israeli society – suggests that even Netanyahu himself is but one cog in a culture that exploits past history, fear, paranoia and trauma to inflict unbelievable evil and suffering on others, and moreover justify doing so.
Above all, the film does not address how much support Israel receives from Western and other governments and private corporations in creating, building and maintaining the digital systems and tools that enable the country to carry out its project of annihilating the Palestinians.