Israel’s culture minister has called for the Oscar-winning Israeli directors of 'NAZA', Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, to be stripped of their citizenship. The documentary about the country’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza won Venice's Special Jury Prize,
Euronews reports.
One of the most talked about and celebrated films of this year's Venice Film Festival is NAZA – the new film by Israeli No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and the only documentary to be selected to this year's main competition.
It shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its official synopsis.
The 80-minute hot-button doc, shot in secrecy at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv during the ongoing Gaza war, features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers, soldiers and whistleblowers. They discuss how Palestinians are targeted – hence the title of the film, a military acronym used by Israeli Military Forces to refer to the number of civilians expected to be killed in an airstrike in Gaza. It stands for "Nezek Agavi": collateral damage.
During Saturday's award ceremony, NAZA won the Special Jury Prize. Only a day later, Israel's Culture Minister Miki Zohar announced that he would “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship” of the directing duo, directly equating criticism of Israel's actions to antisemitism.
According to a translation provided by X, Zohar called NAZA “vile” and the Venice Film Festival honor “shocking,” adding: “The self-loathing that burns in the creators, who are willing to harm their homeland just to get applause from antisemites around the world, is inconceivable and constitutes a betrayal of the state.”
