Miki Zohar accuses Oscar-winning directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of ‘treason against the state’
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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
Israel’s culture minister has called for the Oscar-winning Israeli directors of NAZA, a documentary about the country’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, to be stripped of their citizenship, accusing them of “treason against the state”.
NAZA, which was produced by the Guardian, is named for an acronym used by Israel’s intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike on Gaza.
In the film, the Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor spoke to 24 Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers who outlined the AI-powered targeting systems used to bombard Gaza that have killed tens of thousands of civilians. In one interview, ar to kill one Hamas member
The 80-minute documentary won a special jury prize at this year’s Venice film festival on Saturday, after receiving a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record.
On Sunday, Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, accused the directors of being willing to “harm their homeland in order to receive applause from antisemites around the world”.
“I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state,” Zohar wrote on X.
On Monday, Zohar expanded on these comments, issuing a statement saying: “This morning, I wrote to the director general of the Population and Immigration Authority and the director general of the interior ministry, asking them to examine the possibility of revoking the Israeli citizenship of the creators of the anti-Israel film NZA [sic] for breach of loyalty to the state and collaboration with the enemy.
“I also asked them to investigate how the materials used in the film were obtained, who was responsible for obtaining them, and whether any actions carried out in acquiring or disseminating them could amount to assisting the enemy during wartime.
“Freedom of expression is not a licence to betray the state. Anyone who acts against Israel during a war must know that there will be a price to pay.”
The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned the film. “It’s shocking. We are fighting global antisemitic incitement and when it comes from within us it is intolerable,” he said in a video posted on social media. “And now two Israeli directors portraying the IDF as war criminals receive applause at the Venice festival.”
Other Israeli ministers also took aim at the directors, who won an Oscar in 2025 for their film No Other Land about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
‘They know the house they are bombing is full of children’: NAZA’s directors on their devastating film about Israeli intelligence
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“You are a disgrace and an embarrassment to the entire people of Israel. Go away!” the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said on X.
“I am certain that your friends, that is to say our enemies Hamas in Gaza, will welcome you with open arms.”
On Monday, the chief of general staff of the Israeli military claimed the film was “based on blood libels, deliberate distortions of reality and grave, false accusations against IDF soldiers and commanders”.
Eyal Zamir said military lawyers were examining “possible legal measures concerning the film and those involved in it”.
The former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman called Abraham and Szor “haters of Israel”, while the former prime minister Naftali Bennett described it as “a horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters”.
The revocation of nationality is legally possible in Israel, although it is rarely applied. In 2022 the supreme court confirmed that the state may strip people of their nationality if they have failed to show “loyalty”, for example by committing acts of espionage or treason. The law was also expanded in 2023 to apply to people convicted of “terrorism”. The law requires the interior minister to submit the revocation request, the justice minister to approve it and judges to validate it.
Abraham’s family home was targeted by a rightwing mob after the world premiere of 2024’s No Other Land, which focused on the destruction of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank.
“We’re taking risks in a system that privileges us, that has Jewish-Israeli supremacy as its founding characteristic,” he told the Guardian, adding: “For so many Palestinians, it’s not a rightwing mob that’s coming to their home: it’s US-funded bulldozers and weapons.
“Imagine if a Palestinian journalist in Gaza tried to do what we did and called up senior Israeli officials. There is no comparison. They would most likely be murdered.”
The Israeli military initially responded to NAZA by saying it “categorically rejects” the allegations made in the documentary and criticised the use of anonymous testimonies, saying the identities of the whistleblowers “cannot be verified”. In a later response, the military said “the allegations required a detailed, evidence-based response rather than a blanket dismissal”.
Some figures on the Israeli left praised the film and its directors. The former lawmaker Yousef Jabareen, chair of the leftwing Hadash party, congratulated the directors on the award, thanking them for bringing “these horrific crimes and the brutal reality in Gaza” before millions of people.
Anat Saragusti, the head of press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel, said: “The Israeli public has not received anything close to adequate coverage in Hebrew of what has happened in Gaza. For much of the war, Israeli media barely showed the Palestinian side of the story – the civilian casualties, the children killed, the destruction. People could find that information elsewhere if they actively looked for it, but they were not seeing it in the mainstream Hebrew-language media.”
In an editorial, the Haaretz newspaper urged Israelis to confront what it described as the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza. “By screening their film at the Venice film festival, Abraham and Szor are trying to force Israelis to confront what they already know: that there’s a black stain on the way Israel is conducting war in Gaza, to put it mildly,” Haaretz wrote.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on official Israeli figures. Hamas militants also took 251 hostages to Gaza.
The Gaza health ministry has reported more than 73,000 deaths in the subsequent three years of Israeli bombardment, the vast majority of which have been civilian casualties.
A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said: “The Guardian is 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.”
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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