NAZA is sheer antisemitic propaganda

“NAZA,” the new documentary about the Israel Defense Forces’ AI-assisted war in Gaza by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, has become a mouthpiece for ideological purity and emotionally packaged advocacy. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 10 and was greeted by an ovation lasting roughly twenty-five minutes, the longest in the festival’s history. The previous record for the longest standing ovation was for the duo’s previous 2024 film, “No Other Land,” a searing indictment of … guess who? Yes, Israelis. That time, they were the “violent extremist settlers.” Twenty-five minutes of applause. Nearly one-third of the film’s own 80-minute running time. You can imagine the audience rapt in their collective fervor, swept up in their own righteousness. Maybe some looked around, not wanting to be the first to sit down, knowing that doing so could make them appear insufficiently caring or loyal.

“NAZA” itself is an Israeli military acronym derived from nezek agavi, Hebrew for “collateral damage,” including anticipated civilian harm associated with a strike. The title’s conspicuous resemblance to “Nazi” is difficult to dismiss as an afterthought. It is hard to imagine that the filmmakers never noticed the association. Before a single frame appears, the title has already begun framing the prosecution. Much of the international reception has treated the film’s conclusion as an established premise. One prominent review called it “essential.” Another described NAZA as laying bare systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” That language does not frame an investigation; it announces a verdict. The Venice festival itself presented the film using the filmmakers’ characterization of “calculated mass killing.” Then came 25 minutes of applause. At that point, criticism began to look like catechism—and the reception itself resembled agitprop.

That ritual has a history. Under Stalin, whose regime became virulently anti-Zionist, extravagant applause was part of what scholars of Soviet political culture have described as public “loyalty rituals.” Mao’s Cultural Revolution produced mass rallies in which hundreds of thousands, sometimes more than a million people, cheered and applauded for extended periods while proclaiming devotion to the chairman. Venice, in particular, has seen politically charged cinema embraced as moral and artistic transcendence before. In 1935, the festival honored Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” the Nazi Party’s monumental cinematic glorification of Hitler. Three years later, Venice awarded Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” the Mussolini Cup, then one of the festival’s highest honors. Prestigious cultural institutions are no more immune than anyone else to the orthodoxies of their time.

Imagine the reverse. A Palestinian filmmaker makes an equally uncompromising documentary about Hamas. Its subjects describe the deliberate slaughter of Israeli women and children on Oct. 7; the taking of civilian hostages; the operation of military infrastructure under hospitals, mosques, and schools; repression of Palestinians who challenge Hamas; and a leadership willing to expose its own population to catastrophic consequences in pursuit of an ideological, explicitly genocidal war. Would such a Palestinian film receive the same welcome? Would such a Palestinian film receive the same welcome? Would European producers race to finance it? Would it reach the artistic apex of Venice? Would an audience stand for 25 minutes waving Israeli flags? Would any of those cheering “NAZA” have been willing even to watch the damning 47-minute film compiled from Hamas’s own footage of the atrocities committed on Oct. 7? Ignoring this backstory may be the film’s greatest sin of omission.

The asymmetry is hard to miss: automatic credibility granted to accusations against Israel, cultural prestige attached to denouncing it, and suspicion directed at those who challenge the prevailing narrative. When Jews and the Jewish state are subjected to standards that others are routinely spared, this is no longer merely criticism. It is a double standard, and that double standard has a name: antisemitism—the same ancient impulse that once confined Venice’s Jews behind ghetto walls and now finds expression in the ovation at its famous film festival.