NAZA and the Horror of Genocide
NAZA is the title of a documentary film that opened in Ireland on Friday last. It is attracting a great deal of international interest as its subject is the use of artificial intelligence and automated targeting by the Israeli military in its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Following a recent showing at the Venice Film Festival, it received a Special Jury Prize along with a twenty-five-minute standing ovation.
The word NAZA is a Hebrew acronym measuring the projected collateral damage of Israeli attacks on Palestinians. The movie is co-produced by The Guardian newspaper.
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are the co-directors and both are Israeli investigative journalists. Abraham interviews several people who outline their work in the Israeli war machine as it goes about its barbarous activities.
The interviews were conducted on rooftops in Tel Aviv at night. The interviewees are seen in silhouette with their voices digitally altered.
We are told that every building in Gaza was given a specific serial number. If a suspect lived, let us say, on the fifth floor their home could easily be located.
It only remained then to ascertain if the suspect was in residence. This was done by tapping into a mobile phone.
In one case, the phone of the suspect’s 12-year-old daughter was tapped. An attack was then launched, and the suspect was killed along with his young daughter and several others.
The total number killed, in this case, let us say twenty, delivered a 20 NAZA, all very scientific and impersonal.
Banality of Evil
Listening to these stories one is reminded of the phrase “the banality of evil” coined by Hannah Arendt about Adolf Eichmann at his trial in 1963. None of the people talking demonstrate moral revulsion over their work.
They were part of an elite unit that others envied; or they had a duty to get on with the mission; or if it wasn’t them someone else would do it. The film tells us a lot about the mentality of key agents in the Israeli Defence Force.
Towards the end of a picture that is extremely hard to watch we are shown an old clip of Benjamin Netanyahu promoting his book, Fighting Terrorism. In it he gives a definition of political terrorism that exactly sums up the policy his government pursues against Palestinians.
He condemns himself out of his own mouth. NAZA shows how the genocide was conducted and the awareness of this by the operatives who enabled it and its effects or non-effects on them.
It does not tackle the Zionism that gave rise to it. This lies outside the director’s remit.
Likewise, the role of Zionism as an agent of Western imperialism in the Middle East is untouched. Nevertheless, NAZA is an important piece of cinema and should not be missed.
It runs for 77 minutes and is currently showing at the Irish Film Institute and Lighthouse. In November it will be streamed on The Guardian website.
Nicky Coules is a former People Before Profit councillor on the South Dublin County Council.
Image: Barcex, Madrid – Manifestación por Palestina, 4 October 2025, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
