Gaza: “NAZA” documentary reveals “massacre on an industrial scale”

This time, the accusations come neither from Palestinian activists nor from NGOs. They come from within the Israeli military apparatus itself. Presented on September 10 at the Venice Film Festival, the documentary NAZAdirected by Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, gives voice to Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers directly involved in the war in Gaza.

Their testimonies describe a chilling reality: the deaths of Palestinian civilians do not appear only as a consequence of the strikes. It is anticipated, quantified and integrated into the decision-making process.

Palestinian lives transformed into a calculating variable

The term “NAZA” designates precisely, in Israeli military jargon, the number of civilian casualties expected during a strike. In other words, before a bomb is dropped, a number of civilians likely to be killed may already be known and accepted. The soldiers interviewed also describe a targeting system assisted by artificial intelligence making it possible to locate people even in their family homes.

Entire families can thus find themselves caught in a strike targeting a single person. Even more damning, officers report the existence of areas declared prohibited by the Israeli army without their boundaries being communicated to residents. Civilians could then be killed simply for crossing an invisible border.

The formula used by one of the officers is terrible: “They have to learn with blood. » “They must learn by blood. “. Another soldier describes what he saw as: “Mass killing on an industrial scale. » “Massacres on an industrial scale”.

What shows NAZA is therefore much more disturbing than the usual “collateral damage” narrative. The documentary describes a military mechanism in which the death of civilians is quantified even before the strike. Yuval Abraham says the system was designed to hit people in civilian spaces, including their family homes. Meanwhile, Israel continues to assert that it seeks to limit civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using the population as human shields.

But the testimonies collected in NAZA come head-on into this official version. Because those speaking were not watching the war from Gaza or from abroad. They were inside the Israeli military machine. The scandal revealed by NAZA is therefore not only due to the appalling number of Palestinians killed. It also concerns this question: how could the death of civilians become a figure, a piece of data, a variable considered acceptable before launching a strike?

A mechanism that one of Israel’s own officers finally sums up in a few words: massacres on an industrial scale.