NAZA Documentary: Gaza, Israel and the Question of War Crimes
What happens when Israeli soldiers describe civilian deaths as part of the targeting calculus in Gaza, and a government answers with outrage instead of evidence.
A note from Lawrence
I open this one with a challenge: read it with your mind as wide open as you can make it. My earlier essays on Gaza made some people lose their minds, and before anyone welcomes me to a position they think I just discovered, I was first in line to despise Netanyahu back in 1995.
NAZA, a documentary by two Jewish Israeli directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, won a special jury prize at Venice. It’s built on rooftop testimony from twenty-four Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers about how civilian deaths were factored into targeting. Within forty-eight hours, Israel’s culture minister vowed to strip the filmmakers of their citizenship. I ask what it means when a government answers testimony with outrage instead of evidence.
