Benjamin Netanyahu has called for an investigation to identify 24 Israeli Defence Force soldiers featured anonymously in the award-winning documentary NAZA, which examines how civilian casualties were assessed during attacks in Gaza.
The soldiers appear only as shadowy figures, with their voices distorted to protect their identities. Some allege that the IDF uses artificial intelligence models and mobile phone surveillance to calculate how many civilians could be killed in an attack, while others describe attacks on injured or starving Palestinians.
Netanyahu has instructed the heads of the IDF and Israel’s intelligence communities to investigate those involved in the film. In a social media post, he called on the Chief of the General Staff, the head of the Shin Bet and the Attorney General to pursue the matter.
“I demand that the Chief of the General Staff, the head of the Shin Bet and the Attorney General initiate a comprehensive investigation against the participants in the film NAZA and bring them to trial for serious information security offenses, criminal defamation, and harm to Israel’s political and security interests,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister rejected the documentary’s account, saying: “The film presents a false, misleading, and biased plot that defames the State of Israel and the IDF in the world and severely damages Israel’s standing.”
“We will always stand with our beloved and heroic fighters!” he added.
NAZA, a Hebrew military acronym referring to “collateral damage”, won the Special Jury Prize at the 2026 Venice International Film Festival and secured a global release, although it will not be shown in Israel.
Several days before Netanyahu’s call for an investigation, the film’s creators received a Certificate of Recognition. A post from the Israeli prime minister’s account said the documentary presented soldiers’ testimonies that refuted what it described as “blood libels” against IDF soldiers and commanders, while also portraying Hamas’s “crimes and its vile use of the civilian population”.
The film was directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, whose 2024 documentary about Israeli settlers, No Other Land, won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
After NAZA premiered at Venice in September, Abraham said the filmmakers had asked the soldiers to describe what they had done. He later said he and Szor had used their access to people in Israeli society who had served in the military to examine the system amid allegations by human rights organisations that Israel had carried out genocide.
