Israeli minister threatens to revoke filmmakers' citizenship over Gaza documentary

Israel's culture minister has called for the Oscar-winning Israeli co-directors of Naza, a documentary that accuses the Israeli army of mass civilian killings in Gaza, to be stripped of their citizenship over "treason against the state".

Named for the Hebrew military acronym for collateral damage, the film speaks to 24 unidentified Israeli military and intelligence officers who outlined the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israeli army to bombard Gaza in the war triggered by the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

Since then, more than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 children, have been killed in the campaign by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, figures considered reliable by the UN. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack.

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor say their 80-minute documentary "details the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza" during the war, according to its official synopsis. One of the people interviewed says there was the approval for an attack to kill 500 people for "one human target", an allegation the IDF said was "completely false".

In a post on X, Culture Minister Miki Zohar said he had asked the authorities "to investigate how the materials were obtained, who is behind them, and whether in the process of obtaining or publishing them, actions were taken that amount to aiding the enemy during wartime".

In a letter addressed to Israel's Interior Ministry, he said: "The claims presented in the film are false and distorted, and I categorically reject the attempt to portray IDF soldiers and the State of Israel as perpetrators of intentional crimes." Zohar mentioned the country's Citizenship Law, saying it "allows for the revocation of citizenship due to a 'breach of allegiance to the State of Israel'". The measure, however, has rarely been applied.

There has been no immediate reaction from Abraham and Szor. The filmmakers won an Oscar last year for No Other Land, a documentary about violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Naza premiered last Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a 25-minute standing ovation, but has not yet been made available to the wider public. It won a special jury prize at the festival. Speaking then, Abraham said the reporting for the film, which was produced by the UK's Guardian newspaper, had been "rigorous" and that efforts to discredit it were "attempts to not face reality".