During the last week of August, an Israeli strike hit a building in Bureij refugee camp. Unfortunately, some families could not escape. A four-year-old innocent boy was killed, while his mother and sister were wounded. Moreover, Israel also struck Shati refugee camp, saying weapons were stored inside two mosques but providing no public evidence.
Such attacks are why NAZA cannot be treated as a film about some past violence. It arrived while Palestinians were still being brutally killed by the military system its witnesses describe.
What the Word “NAZA” Hides
NAZA is a Hebrew military acronym for “collateral damage.” It refers to the number of civilians expected to die in an approved strike.
Shockingly, the term turns a mother, a child, or an entire family into a figure beside a proposed target. Their deaths are not discovered only after the bomb falls. According to testimony in the film, they can be anticipated before an attack is authorised.
In fact, the documentary challenges Israel’s claim that Gaza’s civilian toll resulted mainly from accidents, individual failures, or Hamas operating among civilians.
Twenty-Four Voices From Inside the System
The film was directed by renowned Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who worked on the Oscar-winning No Other Land. They spent three straight years gathering testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers.
The interviews were recorded secretly on Tel Aviv rooftops. The faces and voices of these officers were altered because the participants feared retaliation. Some spoke with guilt, while others appeared indifferent or proud. The directors kept the focus on what they did rather than how they felt.
The witnesses describe surveillance, casualty estimates and remote bombing. Several discuss AI-assisted systems that processed information taken from thousands of Palestinian phones. Calls, locations and personal connections could help identify an alleged Hamas member.
One account describes words detected through a child’s phone indicating that her father had returned home. That information could trigger an airstrike on the family residence. Many people identified by these systems were alleged low-ranking members, yet their homes could be bombed while relatives were present.
In fact, an algorithm did not make these decisions alone. Officers supplied the data, commanders set the rules and human beings approved the attacks.
Families Were Included in the Calculation
One insider claims that approval was granted for an attack expected to kill 500 civilians to strike one Hamas member. The Israeli military has denied planning or approving an operation with 500 anticipated deaths.
That denial must be acknowledged, but it does not answer the testimony. Several witnesses describe civilians receiving an acceptable casualty number before strikes. They also describe attacks in which the suspected target was not confirmed inside the building.
Additionally, other accounts concern Palestinians killed after entering exclusion zones that residents could not see. Witnesses also discuss attacks near aid distribution points. Israel acknowledged that civilians were harmed at these locations and said it changed its rules.
The pattern described is not a handful of soldiers disobeying orders. It is a method built into targeting decisions.
The Refugee Camps Show the Killing Has Not Ended
The Bureij attack was not an isolated act of genocide. During the first week of September, 17-year-old Ibrahim al-Hash was killed in an Israeli drone strike in Jabalia refugee camp. Eight days later, drones struck Nuseirat camp and wounded several Palestinians, some critically. Israeli forces also opened fire near Jabalia.
These are densely populated communities where generations of Palestinians displaced during the Nakba have lived. Their homes and shelters have deliberately been attacked throughout the genocide.
Israel says its strikes target militants, weapons stores or people entering restricted areas. In reality, its explanations often come without evidence that families or independent investigators can examine.
By the second week of September, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that Israel had killed 1,369 Palestinians and wounded 4,627 since the October 2025 ceasefire. The wider toll since October 2023 had reached at least 73,783 killed and 174,738 wounded.
Palestinians Had Already Told the World
NAZA does not make Palestinian suffering true because Israelis now describe it. Palestinian journalists, doctors, rescue workers and survivors have documented attacks on homes, hospitals, schools, tents and aid seekers throughout the genocide.
Their testimony was doubted or placed beneath Israeli military statements. The film matters significantly because people who operated the surveillance and targeting systems now describe the machinery in its own language.
Their accounts support a record Palestinians had already built with their blood, photographs and names.
Israel Turned on the Filmmakers
NAZA received a 25-minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. However, Israel’s leadership responded with fury.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the documentary antisemitic incitement. Their military chief Eyal Zamir accused it of falsehoods and directed military lawyers to examine possible action. Culture Minister Miki Zohar asked officials to consider stripping Abraham and Szor of their citizenship for alleged disloyalty.
This is not Antisemitism but evidence of Israeli crimes against Palestinians. The response also shows why insider testimony is dangerous. Palestinian witnesses are routinely dismissed as hostile. Israeli officers describing the same system are harder to silence.
Testimony Must Become Accountability
NAZA has broken through part of Israel’s machinery of denial. It presents insiders describing a system in which Palestinian families could be counted before they were killed.
Although a documentary cannot stop the next airstrike, its evidence must lead to independent investigations, an end to military support and accountability for those who designed, approved and protected the system.
Otherwise, NAZA will remain more than a film title. It will remain the cold number placed beside another Palestinian home.
