I went to see NAZA last week. In case you haven’t heard yet, NAZA is a documentary on the Israeli machinery of mass killing in Gaza. It draws a picture of this machinery by interviewing 24 Israeli who work(ed) for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The interviewees describe how the machinery of killing Palestinians in Gaza works and relies on AI. Israel is able to listen to the phone conversations and read phone messages of people living in Gaza. It uses that information to guess who works for Hamas, and where those people might be. It then bombs the houses of those AI-identified targets, and in that process allows their families or anyone else in the house also to be killed, hence the title of the film: NAZA means ‘collateral damage’. “20 NAZA” then means that the Israeli military accepts that there will be 20 other people as collateral damage for the attempted elimination of one (presumed) member of Hamas. The numbers mentioned in the film vary – I recall the numbers 15 and 20, but also one situation where “500 NAZA” allegedly was approved by the IDF.
The film is deeply disturbing for various reasons. One is to see the use of AI in this genocide, and the mistakes it inevitably makes (a house is bombed because the phone of a target is there, assuming that means the target is asleep; but since the target left his phone before leaving the house, his entire family is murdered, but the target is not). Another one is the evil actions the IDF takes – such as when the interviewees describe that at some point, a mental line is drawn in north-Gaza, whereby anyone who crosses that line will be killed. Civilians have never been informed of that line, and have to find out by trial and error. The dogs know about the line, since they wait until they hear shooting, so that they can then go and eat the murdered Palestinian (bodies are not taken away).
A third, and what I might have found the most disturbing thread in the documentary, is the interviewees justifying their actions as being mere cogs in a machine, a machine they need to trust and believe in. They just follow orders; if they don’t do the work, someone else will – and after all, doing intelligence work for the IDF is a prestigious function to hold. There is very little self-reflection on the part of the interviewees, and almost no asking of the bigger moral questions (with perhaps one exception, which you’ll figure out when you see the film). It’s been more than twenty years since I read Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil – but I know I am not the only one who was reminded of her analysis while watching the film. But apparently it does not cross their minds that they might be perpetrators of evil, rather than only the descendants of those who suffered from evil.
The documentary is stylistically very effective, since the interviews are conducted (in the darkness) on rooftops of buildings in Tel Aviv, while we see people around them in their homes conducting their lives. Only in the last five minutes do we see some footage of the massacres in Gaza, making the contrast between the technocratic talk of the IDF officers and the reality on the ground all the more painful.
I watched NAZA Tuesday last week in an almost sold-out film theatre. At the end, there was complete silence. Sure, those who choose to watch this film must want to be informed about what Israel is doing in Gaza; we can assume that they read up on the atrocities. But this was different from both all the written reporting and the footage of the carnage in Gaza – for the banality of evil was given a voice.
Defenders of Israeli politics have for many years been trying to gaslight defenders of human rights, and of the rights of Palestinians in particular. One of their strategies is to label any critique antisemitic; another is to claim that only Jews can truly understand the “conflict” and others should refrain from commenting. (This is why there will be no comments possible on this post; I’m fed up with defenders of Israeli politics trying to gaslight us).
Many of us are citizens whose governments are supporting Israel, with military deals or otherwise. Israeli, and anyone with ties to Israel, can’t look away. But neither can we. Go watch this film if you can.