Israel’s culture minister has said he will seek to revoke the Israeli citizenship of the two directors behind the documentary “NAZA”, after it won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Miki Zohar accused Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of betraying Israel over the film, which features interviews with 24 people identified as Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers.
The interviewees allege that artificial intelligence-powered targeting systems were used in Gaza to kill Palestinian civilians. The claims have not been independently established.
In a social media post, Mr Zohar said he would “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of” the filmmakers. He described their alleged conduct as a betrayal of the state and accused them of wanting approval from “anti-semites around the world”.
He later said he had contacted senior officials at the Population Authority and the Interior Ministry to examine whether the directors’ citizenship could be denied for “breach of trust for the country and cooperation with the enemy”. He also called for scrutiny of how the material was obtained and whether its acquisition or publication could have assisted Israel’s enemies during wartime.
Israeli law allows the government to strip citizens of their nationality, but a request must be submitted by the interior minister, approved by the justice minister and then validated by judges. The Interior Ministry has not immediately responded to the move.
Other members of Israel’s coalition government have also condemned the filmmakers. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called them “a disgrace and an embarrassment to the entire people of Israel” and said he was certain Hamas would welcome them.
Mr Abraham and Ms Szor previously won an Oscar for “No Other Land”, a film about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Following the Venice screening of “NAZA”, Mr Abraham told audiences that Israeli intelligence officers interviewed for the documentary had described the mass killing of Palestinians as “systemic: not by accident, but by design, actions of murder and policies that are based on the total dehumanization of Palestinians”.
The Israel Defense Forces has criticised the documentary’s reliance on anonymous sources, saying the identities of the whistleblowers “cannot be verified”. The military has repeatedly denied deliberately targeting civilians in the Palestinian territories.
