Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor face threats of citizenship revocation after their documentary NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in September 2026. The film details military surveillance and civilian casualties in Gaza, an intense government backlash and a hastily produced IDF reserve counter-documentary.
Venice Premiere Provokes Domestic Condemnation
The film takes its title from a military acronym used to estimate expected civilian casualties during an airstrike, operating as collateral damage. Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, the project is built upon nearly three years of investigation. The directors interviewed 24 Israeli military and intelligence personnel who spoke under concealed identities, with their faces and voices altered while discussing surveillance, target selection, and strike authorization during the Gaza war. The documentary also builds on revelations first published from 2023 to 2025 by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, and the Guardian.
The international acclaim was instantly met with fierce domestic condemnation.
Netanyahu Proposes Stripping Citizenship for Defaming Soldiers
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalated the government response by announcing plans to introduce new legislative measures allowing authorities to strip citizenship from individuals who smear Israeli soldiers. Speaking as protests intensified outside the family homes of the directors, Netanyahu declared that his administration would promote government bills targeting the defamation of military personnel.
The institutional backlash extended directly into the military chain of command. Far-right activists, journalists, and public figures escalated pressure, with protesters gathering outside private residences demanding severe penalties and demonstrators calling for the death penalty. Far-right rapper Yoav Eliasi, who maintains more than 750,000 followers on Facebook, shared a video showing the creation of a campaign directed against the filmmakers.
Military Refutes Documentary Findings
The military establishment issued a comprehensive ten-page refutation targeting specific assertions made in the documentary. IDF spokesperson Effie Defrin dismissed the film’s contents as completely false and misleading, focusing particularly on a segment where an anonymous interviewee claims the military planned a strike anticipating five hundred civilian casualties. The IDF maintained that no such operation was ever planned, approved, or executed, and argued that the filmmakers presented claims without verifiable supporting evidence or independently checkable sources.
Three Israeli creators—Lt. Col. Roi Danino, Hagai Gutman, and Ariel Averbuch—released a counter-documentary titled NAZA: The Real Story. Filmed under tight security on Tel Aviv rooftops to mimic the aesthetic of the original project, the 49-minute rebuttal relies on declassified recordings, combat footage, and open interviews with active intelligence officers and frontline commanders rather than anonymous junior personnel. The project focuses on Hamas’s battlefield tactics, including the positioning of assets in residential areas and the operational constraints imposed by hostages. The creators distributed the film globally with English subtitles through grassroots networks and digital influencers.
Creators Face Ongoing Domestic Threats
As the digital and political battle lines harden, Abraham and Szor’s work continues to circulate internationally through European and American theatrical runs, even as domestic legal challenges and security threats mount against the production team.
The pair previously won the 2025 Academy Award for No Other Land, their documentary concerning Palestinian displacement and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, the Guardian-produced NAZA made a subsequent debut at the New York Film Festival, playing to an enthusiastic crowd inside Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall while drawing a small but intense pro-Israel protest outside the theater.
Will the proposed legislation strip citizenship from the directors?