Brutal yet incredibly gripping, NAZA pulls no punches in revealing the horrific atrocities inflicted onto the Palestine people by Israel.

NAZA isn’t some play on the word ‘Gaza’, though it has a nice ring to it. Rather, it is a slangy acronym for the term ‘Nezek Agavi’ used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to refer to innocent civilians. What does this mean exactly? Collateral damage in an airstrike. One innocent civilian killed by an airstrike is one NAZA, two civilians are two NAZA and so on.

Over the course of 77 harrowing minutes, most of which takes place on dimly lit rooftops in Tel Aviv between 2023 and 2025, directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham speak to a whopping 24 Israeli commanders and intelligence officers about how the IDF has integrated AI into its military targeting systems to kill Palestinians more effectively.

Each interview subject, their identities concealed by the cover of night and digital voice manipulation, speaks openly about their experiences and roles in the ongoing Gaza war. But this isn’t merely blowing the whistle on the many war crimes perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. NAZA also presents an unflinching exposé of the systemic rot present among Israelis that enables them to commit such horrific acts with no sense of remorse.

Whether we like it or not, we lie to ourselves as a form of protection. It’s a coping mechanism of sorts, a way to avoid the painful truth. But NAZA presents a damning case of what happens when those lies become so ingrained that whatever grey area existed has simply vanished. As one interview subject casually rationalises to Abraham that ‘there aren’t really Arab haters or extreme dehumanisation’ within the IDF, he is immediately at a loss for words when asked to consider that what he’s contributing to is genocide.

Lines and anecdotes like that are elicited from every interview subject with very little effort from Abraham. The documentary doesn’t hesitate to shock you from minute one, and it doesn’t let up until the credits roll. When another interview subject describes how Israeli forces play a twisted game to determine when to kill innocent Palestinian civilians trying to escape from the north to the south, he simply shrugs and tells Abraham, ‘Good luck to them.’

Games are a recurring motif, and the way the IDF AI systems work, as described by the subjects, is akin to how you would play a video game. As we learn more about these AI systems, there’s a sickening feeling of ludonarrative dissonance playing out in real life. When one officer talks about pressing a button that drops a bomb on a building, killing a dozen NAZA, he says it with the tone of someone trying to finish a video game level.

When descriptions aren’t sufficient, subjects draw rough diagrams of how the IDF’s AI systems work and some of the mass-murder tactics used. The drawings are no better than a child’s, but the impact is more visceral than if Abraham and Szor showed captured footage. Watching someone recreate such shocking scenes of violence from memory without any hesitation leaves you pondering how these people even exist. The way the subjects describe their roles and the psychological warfare inflicted on Palestinians is tinged with pride rather than regret. In fact, there’s no sense of regret to be found anywhere.

There are small moments of reprieve when shots of Tel Aviv residents living their everyday lives are slotted in between conversations, but those ultimately reinforce the narrative Abraham and Szor are crafting. After an interview subject describes in detail how they bombed a Palestinian family of six, all of whom are classified as NAZA, it cuts to a random Israeli person cradling their baby while watching TV. This simple juxtaposition is deeply upsetting, and the longer each explanation went on, the more disturbed I became. None of the subjects seem to realise the true impact of their actions. This isn’t compartmentalisation. This even goes beyond the banality of evil. This is the normalisation of killing innocents like they’re annoying flies.

The interview subjects may not have been the ones to pull the trigger or physically drop the bombs, but NAZA presents an undeniable case for how they played a crucial role in the whole machine. A cog, if you will, as described by a subject to hand-wave away any culpability. In trying to explain and justify their actions, each subject comes across as someone who ‘doth protest too much’. During a chat where a subject talks about wild dogs feasting on the bodies of dead Palestinians, he semi-defends himself, saying that he ‘watched from the cameras’ because he ‘couldn’t stand watching a dog eating a body.’ It’s difficult to feel sympathy for any of the subjects when they talk about killing people like it’s an average day job.

As description upon description of the ongoing Palestinian genocide piles up, like the bodies of innocent men, women, and children strewn across the ruins of Gaza, these subjects unknowingly hoisted themselves with their own petards. Abraham and Szor aren’t actively going out to demonise Israel and the IDF. They did that to themselves.

So the lingering question is why these 24 Israeli commanders and intelligence officers agreed to speak to Abraham and Szor? To seek redemption from the horrors they’re responsible for? Sympathy? Someone to talk to, since none of them sought any psychological support, even when offered?

Whatever the reason, it is impossible to find any leeway to give to the 24 interview subjects. At one point, Abraham straight up asks a subject whether he participated in a genocide, to which he replies, ‘Yes,’ with no hesitation before adding, ‘We kill these children deliberately.’ When the spectrum of empathy runs from ‘we kill children’ to ‘I’m not supposed to express any moral or principled position,’ you’ll be incredibly hard-pressed to offer them any.

There’s only one adequate way to sum up the feeling of disgust after watching NAZA, and it comes courtesy of the late Anthony Bourdain (in paraphrased form): Once you’ve watched NAZA, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Netanyahu and the IDF to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what they did to Gaza – the fruits of Netanyahu’s genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.