The horrors of October 7, 2023, are almost impossible to comprehend. Behind the staggering scale of the Hamas massacres are individual stories of unimaginable cruelty and suffering. Stories that must not be forgotten.
Baby Kfir, for example. Or his brother Ariel. Or their mother, Shiri. The two red-haired Israeli boys were just nine months and four years old when terrorists from the Palestinian Hamas abducted them to Gaza. Videos of their kidnapping show the shock and boundless despair in their mother’s eyes as the Islamists, shouting “Allahu Akbar”, violently forced the young family onto a pickup truck and took them to Gaza.
Months later, news spread around the world that the terrorists had murdered the two brothers and their mother with their bare hands. In an act of breathtaking cynicism, Hamas handed over the Israelis’ bodies to the Red Cross. The event was staged as a family celebration, complete with music and cheering. On the boys’ coffins were images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu depicted as a vampire drinking the blood of the Bibas family. Instead of returning the body of the murdered hostage Shiri Bibas, Hamas handed over the remains of a Palestinian woman.
It is difficult to imagine anything more despicable.
Yarden, the father of Kfir and Ariel and Shiri’s husband, survived 484 days in Hamas captivity. He will never see his children or his wife again. Nothing will ever be right again for Yarden. Nothing. Ever.
Or Vivian Silver. The Israeli peace activist lived in Kibbutz Be’eri, right on the border with Gaza. Throughout her life, the 74-year-old campaigned for the Palestinians in Gaza and for a two-state solution. Every week, she drove to the border to collect children suffering from cancer and take them to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
On October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed her home, opened fire and then threw several hand grenades into the safe room where Vivian Silver had sought refuge. It took weeks to identify her remains. Her teeth were found beneath a pile of ashes.
Or Shani Louk, the radiantly beautiful 22-year-old German-Israeli woman who had gone to the Nova festival to dance and celebrate, only to be beaten, abused and shot by Palestinian terrorists, like so many other Israeli women. Afterwards, as Hamas triumphantly paraded her body before the people of Gaza, a mob of Palestinian civilians beat, spat upon and desecrated her remains.
A reminder: On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas breached Israel’s border with a single objective: to kill as many Jews as possible. The genocidal terrorist organisation murdered more than 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel. At the same time, hundreds of rockets were launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian terrorists were supported by Hezbollah, the heavily armed militia in Lebanon supplied by Tehran. From Yemen, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the West Bank, Hamas’s allies also sought to destroy the Jewish state and its citizens – precisely as the slogan goes: “From the River to the Sea!”
Israel was surrounded by a Shiite ring of fire. Overnight, it found itself fighting a war on seven fronts. Once again, the country was forced to fight for its very existence.
At the same time, Hamas abducted more than 250 innocent Israeli civilians and took them into Gaza. Accounts have documented how hostages were raped, abused, subjected to horrific torture and starved to the brink of death.
For weeks, Hamas ignored Israel’s offers to secure the hostages’ release. Jerusalem responded to Hamas’s war of aggression, or, more precisely, Israel did what any state in its position would have done. It defended itself, sought to end the relentless rocket fire from Gaza and attempted to bring its kidnapped citizens home alive.
Why this lengthy introduction to a film review?
Because none of this is shown in NAZA (a title derived from the Hebrew word for “collateral damage”). That is the filmmakers’ prerogative. But it is dishonest.
Would a film depicting the Allied attacks on Nazi Germany be credible if it failed to explain why those attacks took place? Would a film be credible if it gave the impression that the Allies had attacked Nazi Germany for no reason whatsoever? Or even suggested that they had done so out of some bloodthirsty impulse to kill other human beings?
Instead, NAZA insidiously draws parallels between the war against the Palestinian terrorist organisation Hamas and the Holocaust. It compares soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces with the Nazi perpetrators responsible for murdering six million Jews. It asks what, precisely, still distinguishes Israeli soldiers from SS mass murderers. It suggests that Israel is exploiting the Shoah to conceal its own alleged genocide of the Palestinians.
It must be said unequivocally: This film is an unmitigated scandal.
Whether or not its directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, intended it, this is the most manipulative film to have appeared in cinemas for a very long time.
Precisely because NAZA presents itself so innocently. Seemingly objective. Concerned solely with humanity and the preservation of democratic values in Israel.
But what moral legitimacy can a film about this war claim when it fails to examine the role of Hamas, which started this cruel and bloody conflict and could have ended it within minutes – as explained above?
Without addressing Israel’s dilemma, expressed by former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in these words: “We will never forgive the Arabs for attacking us and forcing us to kill their sons.”
Without mentioning that the forces determined to destroy the Jewish state once and for all are demonstrably doing everything in their power to achieve precisely that?
Without mentioning that, unlike Hamas, Israel’s military employs legions of independent legal advisers who meticulously seek to ensure compliance with the principle of proportionality under international humanitarian law, which requires that anticipated civilian “collateral damage” not be excessive in relation to the military advantage expected?
Without mentioning that, for example, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Israeli military knowingly accepted the deaths of 500 civilians in a particular attack?
Without mentioning that Hamas’s wartime tactics include driving up the number of Palestinian fatalities – as Hamas leader Sinwar himself put it: “We only make the headlines with blood. No blood, no news. Become martyrs!” – while Israel sought to protect as many civilians as possible?
Without mentioning that using Palestinian civilians as human shields is a fundamental part of Hamas’s strategy?
Without mentioning that Israel’s establishment of evacuation routes, warnings to civilians ahead of attacks, evacuation of civilians from danger zones, administration of more than a million polio vaccinations to Gaza’s population and distribution of more than two million tonnes of food do not constitute genocide, but the very opposite?
Without mentioning that it is an empirical fact that Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any other army in history?
Without mentioning that the casualty figures cited in the film come from Hamas and, moreover, do not distinguish between terrorists and civilians?
Without mentioning – the list could go on almost indefinitely.
Lest there be any misunderstanding: This war was brutal. Life in Gaza was hell.
An Israeli fighter pilot who flew missions over Gaza recently told the Israeli newspaper Ynet: “Every air strike carries the risk of harming innocent people, and on a human level that is terrible. War is hell.”
A scene towards the end of the film is almost unbearable: a distraught Palestinian father searching for his two young children buried beneath the rubble.
They, too, will never return. Nothing will ever be right again for this father. Nothing. Ever.
The same is true for many other people in the Gaza Strip.
A film committed to the truth would have shown the grieving Palestinian father AND the grieving Israeli father.
It would have examined Hamas’s sinister tactics. It would have depicted Israel’s efforts to act humanely, alongside its inevitable partial failure to live up to its own standards.
Because war is hell.
It would have shown that not everything Israel did in this war was lawful, while making clear that this does not mean the war itself was illegitimate.
Because this war was necessary – and there was no alternative.
It would have shown the suffering in Israel and the suffering in Gaza. Not as false balance or an exercise in equidistance, but as the very purpose of political documentary film-making: to report what is.
Yet when it comes to NAZA, not even the old and wise Jewish proverb that a half-truth is a whole lie adequately captures what is happening.
Instead, NAZA sacrifices truth on the altar of an almost fanatical hostility towards Israel’s current government and military, which the film never actually proves guilty of grave wrongdoing, but merely insinuates and whispers accusations against.
This is how propaganda works. This is how demagoguery works. This is how defamation works.
The genocide lie also occupies a prominent place in NAZA: What was once a malicious accusation against Jews has now become a malicious accusation against the Jewish state.
The history of antisemitism has always been, and remains, a history of lies.
What was once alleged against the individual Jew is now alleged against Israel as a nation. The blood libel is no longer directed at the individual Jew, but at the homeland of millions of Jews.
It is despicable.
And its impact is far-reaching.
At the Venice Film Festival, NAZA received a standing ovation lasting more than 25 minutes.
It is as fascinating as it is frightening to watch large sections of the Western film world turn themselves – without even realising it, and while believing themselves to be champions of humanity – into Hamas’s useful idiots by embracing its narrative, steeped in lies and blood.
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