NAZA Doco Criticised For Missing Context and Evidence

Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker has criticised NAZA, a documentary about Israel’s war in Gaza, arguing that while the film raises deeply disturbing allegations, it lacks sufficient factual detail and context.

Writing in Haaretz, Drucker said he found the film extremely difficult to watch and described an intense personal reaction to testimonies about the killing of Palestinian civilians.

Drucker said he knows one of the film’s creators, Yuval Abraham, and has no doubt about his integrity. He also said he was personally familiar with some of the accounts presented in the documentary, including allegations that Israeli forces shot Gazans who crossed boundaries they did not know existed and civilians who went to Israeli-established aid centres for food.

He said he had also personally seen an extremely high “NAZA” figure, a term referring to the expected number of civilian casualties from a strike against a specific military target. Drucker said the figure appeared disproportionate to the importance of the target.

However, he raised serious concerns about the film’s presentation of the testimonies.

Drucker argued that the documentary provides too few details to allow many of the accounts to be independently investigated. Soldiers describe participating in a system that deliberately killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, he wrote, but the film often provides no dates, locations or identifiable incidents.

He drew on his experience at Israel’s Channel 13 investigative programme The Source, where journalists previously examined testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation that documents soldiers’ accounts of their service.

According to Drucker, that investigation found that some testimonies did not withstand scrutiny. He stressed that this did not necessarily mean the witnesses or the organisation had lied, pointing instead to the limitations of human memory and the possibility that individual soldiers did not possess the complete picture.

Drucker also argued that NAZA sometimes presents the testimonies without enough context. He pointed to scenes showing people dining in Tel Aviv alongside accounts from soldiers describing their attitudes towards military operations.

He said the film could leave viewers with the impression that some soldiers enjoyed killing Palestinian children, while questioning whether some soldiers may instead have believed they were helping to attack Hamas.

He also criticised the documentary for giving insufficient attention to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, including the experience of Israeli hostages and accounts of Hamas atrocities.

Another concern, Drucker wrote, involves Hamas’ use of civilian areas. He said there is substantial evidence that Hamas embedded military infrastructure and command centres in civilian locations, including schools and hospitals, and argued that the documentary should have addressed this more fully.

He also questioned the film’s treatment of Israeli air strikes against neighbourhoods where the military estimated that some residents had not evacuated. Drucker said one soldier describes the destruction of entire sections of neighbourhoods on the grounds that residents had been ordered to leave.

“I’m not aware of this happening,” Drucker wrote, adding that, to the best of his knowledge, the account did not reflect what actually occurred.

Despite his criticism, Drucker said he believed NAZA should be seen in Israel.

He argued that the film’s absence of sufficient journalistic verification and complexity weakened its potential impact, saying that a more nuanced approach could have helped more Israelis understand how the military operated in Gaza.

The film received a lengthy ovation at the Venice Film Festival, according to Drucker, but he said reports that it may not be screened in Israel were disappointing.

SUMMARY

Drucker’s criticism is quite specific. In point form, he argues that NAZA is powerful and raises serious issues, but falls short journalistically in several areas:

• Lack of verifiable details

  • The film presents extremely serious testimonies from Israeli soldiers but often gives no dates, locations or identifiable incidents.
  • This makes it difficult to independently investigate or verify the claims.

• Reliability of witness testimony

  • Drucker says his previous investigations into Breaking the Silence found testimonies that did not always hold up under scrutiny.
  • He does not necessarily accuse soldiers of lying. He says memory can be unreliable and soldiers may not have known the full circumstances surrounding an incident.

• Insufficient context surrounding soldiers’ actions

  • The film shows soldiers describing killing civilians and, in some cases, appearing to enjoy their work.
  • Drucker argues that the film does not adequately explore what the soldiers believed was happening at the time or why they believed they were carrying out particular operations.

• The October 7 Hamas attack is largely absent from the context

  • Drucker says the interviewees could have been asked how they were affected by videos of Israeli hostages and accounts of Hamas’ October 7 atrocities.
  • He believes this context could help explain the mindset of some soldiers, without necessarily excusing their actions.

• No meaningful comparison with other armies

  • He says the film does not examine how other militaries have fought terrorist organisations operating among civilian populations.
  • He believes this comparison would provide important context for assessing Israel’s conduct.

• Insufficient treatment of Hamas using civilian areas

  • Drucker argues that the film dismisses or gives inadequate attention to evidence that Hamas used civilians as human shields.
  • He specifically cites Hamas military infrastructure and command centres allegedly located in schools and hospitals.

• Failure to acknowledge Hamas fighters among the casualties

  • Drucker points to lists published by Hamas and Islamic Jihad identifying operatives killed in Israeli strikes.
  • He argues that some of these people had initially been described in international reporting as athletes, journalists or teachers, and says this complicates the film’s presentation of civilian casualties.

• Questionable account of mass neighbourhood strikes

  • He specifically challenges a soldier’s account that the Israeli Air Force destroyed entire sections of neighbourhoods despite an estimated 25% of residents remaining, because those people had been ordered to evacuate.
  • The soldier reportedly responds “Good luck to them” when asked about those who stayed.
  • Drucker says: “I’m not aware of this happening. To the best of my knowledge, it didn’t.”
  • This is perhaps his strongest direct challenge to a specific claim in the film.

• The film lacks complexity

  • Drucker believes NAZA presents one side of an extremely complicated war without sufficiently examining competing explanations or circumstances.
  • He argues that the film would have been “truer to reality” if it had included more of these competing contexts.

• It lacks a sufficiently journalistic approach

  • His fundamental criticism is not that the allegations should be ignored.
  • Rather, he believes the filmmakers should have tested, investigated and contextualised the allegations more rigorously.
  • He thinks this would have made the film more persuasive rather than less critical of Israel.

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