Netanyahu seeks to strip citizenship from Israelis as threats to NAZA film directors intensify
Israeli prime minister to pursue new laws as directors of Guardian-produced film face threats from far-right officials and activists
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‘They know the house they are bombing is full of children’: NAZA’s directors on their devastating film about Israeli intelligence
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he would seek new laws allowing Israel to strip citizenship from people who “smear” Israeli soldiers, escalating the campaign against the Oscar-winning film-makers behind the Gaza documentary NAZA, who have faced threats from senior government and military officials and groups of far-right Israelis gathering outside their families’ homes.
NAZA, which was produced by the Guardian, concerns the country’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza and is named for an acronym used euphemistically by Israel’s intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike. The film builds on revelations first published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call and the Guardian from 2023 to 2025.
The 80-minute documentary won the special jury prize at this year’s Venice film festival on Saturday, after receiving a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record.
Soon afterwards, however, the film’s directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, came under attack from members of Israel’s government, with the culture minister, Miki Zohar, calling for their citizenship to be revoked, and accusing them of “treason against the state”.
Zohar on Wednesday thanked the Israeli prime minister for his announcement to change the law in order to revoke their citizenship, saying it was “time to put an end to this disgrace”.
“We will revoke citizenship for anyone who defames IDF soldiers around the world – he will be deeply hurt in his pocket,” said Netanyahu, who intends to promote two government bills concerning defamation of IDF soldiers and the state of Israel.
According to media reports, the first bill, which will be submitted through the justice ministry, will double the amount of a defamation claim to 1m shekels without proof of damage. The second bill, which will be submitted through the interior ministry, will stipulate the revocation of citizenship for anyone who defames IDF soldiers and the state of Israel around the world.
On Wednesday evening, dozens of rightwing activists gathered outside the home of the parents of Rachel Szor, one of the directors of NAZA. Among the organisers were activists and campaign staff linked to the far-right Otzma Yehudit party of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister. Messages circulated in activist groups earlier on Wednesday urged supporters to gather outside her house. Some of the messages included explicit calls for violence.
Police and border police officers were deployed at the scene.
One protester called for the “death penalty for traitors” and demanded that the homes of the film-makers’ families be demolished.
The latest attacks followed a series of threats and incidents targeting the directors.
Ben-Gvir had called the directors “a disgrace” whileNetanyahu condemned the film as “intolerable”, saying it portrayed the Israel Defense Forces as war criminals.
On Tuesday, the IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, said the military would “not allow IDF soldiers to be made targets through lies and blood libels” and would use “every tool at our disposal” against the film. The Israeli television channel i24 later reported that the military had opened a leak investigation and was seeking assistance from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security and counterintelligence agency. The agency would respond only after receiving a formal request from the military prosecutor, who would probably first consult the attorney general, the channel reported.
Netanyahu posted a video which included an old clip of Abraham confronting a soldier in the occupied West Bank’s south Hebron hills, an area where Israeli forces have repeatedly been accused of supporting settlers during attacks on Palestinians. In the video, the Israeli PM says: “The same director who produced that terrible film that slanders IDF soldiers.”
On Wednesday, far-right Israeli journalists, influencers and activists escalated their threats against the two film-makers. Rightwing activists were organising protests outside addresses linked to the directors and their colleagues.
This comes after the Channel 14 journalist Yehuda Schlesinger said the directors should be “pursued” or “hunted” wherever they went, and prevented from returning to Israel. He urged Jews in Israel and abroad to make clear that what he described as “25 minutes of antisemitic applause” in Venice would come at a “heavy price”.
A rightwing activist with tens of thousands of followers separately called for protesters to target Abraham’s family and associates, saying: “We’ll show him ‘collateral damage’.” He shared a photograph of Abraham’s mother and sought information about the director’s return flight so supporters could “welcome” him at the airport.
A mural appeared in Ashdod depicting Abraham and Szor with crosshairs, horns, swastikas and the word “traitors” emblazoned over the top. A video showing its creation was shared by the far-right rapper Yoav Eliasi, who has more than 750,000 followers on Facebook.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13, Abraham commented on the campaign of vilification, saying: “Of course it’s hard … [Israel] is my home, it’s the only place I want to live, a place that is important to me. So of course I’m afraid I won’t be able to return.”
As the threats against the directors intensified, film-makers and human rights groups voiced support for the pair.
In a joint statement, 43 local human rights organisations urged Israeli authorities to stop what they described as incitement and threats against the film-makers, and not to prosecute either them or their
“The institutional response to the film and the threats against its creators are characteristic of dictatorial regimes,” said the statement, signed by groups including Peace Now, Adalah, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Breaking the Silence.
More than 1,500 Israeli film-makers have also signed a petition defending “freedom of expression and creation” and expressing solidarity with Szor and Abraham.
“In recent days, we have witnessed an unprecedented smear and incitement campaign against the film-makers, with the line between this rhetoric and physical violence or threats to their lives narrowing rapidly,” the petition said.
The signatories said the role of art and journalism was to reflect society and encourage debate, “even when facing a harsh reality”, and called for the film to be released in Israel so audiences could judge it for themselves.
Szor and Abraham won an Oscar for their previous documentary, 2024’s No Other Land (co-directed with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal), which spotlighted Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank.
The NGOs called for a “thorough” investigation into the high number of casualties in Gaza, particularly among civilians, and for journalists to be granted unimpeded access to the territory, from which Israel has largely barred foreign reporters since October 2023.
Prominent figures in international cinema have also expressed solidarity with Abraham and Szor. Laura Poitras, who directed the 2015 Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour, about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, called the threats by Israeli government officials “a threat to journalists worldwide”.
Diplomatic and foreign ministry actually have boosted international media attention on the documentary
“It would have made headlines anyway, but they really helped amplify it,” ay fact that the government responded drew attention and headlines.”
Late on Wednesday, +972 Magazine posted a video showing a man painting over the mural of the NAZA directors, replacing the word “traitors” with “heroes”.
In a statement, the Guardian said it was “disturbed to see the authoritarian response to NAZA in Israel.
“Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are brave journalists and film-makers. The attacks against them come from people who have not yet seen the film.
“NAZA is based on more than three years of investigative journalism. The testimonies it contains are true and we believe they deserve to be heard. The interviews were given by confidential journalistic
“We will robustly defend NAZA – and the team behind it – from any attacks or attempts at censorship.”
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