Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar has announced plans to revoke the citizenship of filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, accusing them of treason following their receipt of a prestigious award at the Venice Film Festival. The directors are the creators of “NAZA,” a documentary that examines Israeli military operations in Gaza and features interviews with former intelligence operatives.
The film, which earned a Special Jury Award on Saturday, centers on the acronym “NAZA,” used within the Israeli military to estimate the number of civilian casualties expected from an airstrike before it is carried out. Abraham and Szor conducted nighttime rooftop interviews in Tel Aviv with 24 current and former Israeli military and intelligence personnel, who discussed the use of AI-powered targeting systems during the offensive launched in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
Zohar took to the social media platform X to condemn the filmmakers, stating that they were “willing to harm their homeland in order just to get applause from antisemites around the world.” He declared his intention to act immediately to strip the duo of their Israeli nationality.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Minister of National Security, also criticized the directors on social media, describing them as a “disgrace and an embarrassment” to Israel.
The legal mechanism for revoking citizenship exists in Israel, and the Supreme Court upheld this power in 2022, ruling that the state can denationalize individuals for acts of disloyalty, such as espionage or treason. However, the Israeli military has rejected the allegations presented in the 80-minute documentary, criticizing the reliance on anonymous testimonies and noting that the identities of the whistleblowers could not be verified.
The documentary addresses the human cost of the conflict, citing Gaza official figures—which the UN considers broadly reliable—indicating that more than 73,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children, have been killed since the operation began. In contrast, the October 7 attacks resulted in approximately 1,200 deaths in Israel.
Abraham stated that the intelligence officers interviewed described the mass killing of Palestinians as systematic rather than accidental. “They talked to us about how this mass killing is systemic: not by accident, but by design, actions of murder and policies that are based on the total dehumanization of Palestinians,” he said. The Israeli army maintains that it does not deliberately target civilians.
Threatening artists is hardly a good PR move. They’re only getting more attention now.
I was unaware of the NAZA acronym system described in the documentary. The whistleblower testimonies are quite alarming.
Wait, can they actually just strip someone’s nationality because the government dislikes their film? That seems extreme.
This is a dangerous precedent. Revoking citizenship for artistic criticism undermines democracy.