Israel is threatening to revoke the citizenship of the two directors of ‘Naza’, one of the award-winning films at Venice

“Anyone who acts against the State of Israel during a war cannot continue to hold Israeli citizenship,” said the Israeli Minister of Culture Miki Zohar. The criticism is directed at Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the two directors who won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival for their film “Naza”.

The documentary takes its name from the military acronym used by the Israeli army to refer to collateral damage caused by attacks, and thus to the civilians killed as a result. The directors’ statement explains that their work analyses ‘the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible’. The film was produced in collaboration with *The Guardian* and *JW Films*.

Miki Zohar shared this morning, in a post on X, the letter sent to the Director-General of the Central Population Bureau and to the Ministry of the Interior, in which she calls for the revocation of citizenship from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The two are accused of ‘breach of loyalty to the state’ and ‘collaboration with the enemy’, with the aim of producing an ‘anti-Israeli’ and ‘despicable’ film. The Israeli minister also wishes to clarify the methods used by the filmmakers to source the material and the identities of all those responsible.
A response from theIsraeli army also arrived this morning. The spokesperson for the IDF completely rejected the issues raised in ‘Naza’. Within the documentary, ‘claims are made regarding national and military strategy that clearly fall outside the knowledge of low-ranking soldiers’.

Furthermore, the army has denied claims regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the selection of targets to be eliminated: ‘Decisions regarding the selection and authorisation of attacks within the IDF are taken exclusively by people, in accordance with the guidelines’.