NAZA: The Machinery of Genocide Exposed

Some films deserve to be watched. NAZA demands it.

The extraordinary new documentary NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, it’s one of the most important films of our time. It exposes the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and provides compelling evidence of something the world has been reluctant to acknowledge: Israel is committing genocide.

What makes this documentary so powerful is not simply the scale of the atrocities it reveals. We've known about the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of hospitals, schools and homes, and the displacement of entire communities for years. Palestinians have been telling us what’s happening to them all along. Palestinian journalists, doctors, aid workers, families and survivors have documented these atrocities at extraordinary personal risk. Many have been killed while trying to tell the world what’s happening.

But their accounts have too often been dismissed, questioned or ignored by the international political establishment, particularly Israel's Western allies, including Australia.

Governments like ours have repeatedly deferred to official Israeli explanations, even as the evidence of mass killing and destruction has mounted.

There's something profoundly disturbing about the fact that it takes testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers for these atrocities to receive the credibility that Palestinian witnesses have long deserved.

The problem has not been a lack of evidence. It's been a lack of political will to acknowledge it. And that’s what makes NAZA so important.

The film features testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers, intelligence officers and technical personnel. Interviewed anonymously on rooftops overlooking Tel Aviv at night, they describe the systems used to identify targets, and to monitor and kill Palestinian families.

The documentary's title is itself revealing. NAZA is a Hebrew military abbreviation for collateral damage. It refers to the anticipated number of civilians killed in a strike.

Not mothers. Not fathers. Not children. Not human beings with families, hopes and futures.

Just numbers.

The film's interviewees chillingly describe military operations in which substantial civilian casualties were anticipated and accepted. They explain how sophisticated surveillance systems and artificial intelligence tools are used to identify and track potential targets.

Particularly disturbing are accounts of a system known as Where's Daddy?, which helps identify when targeted individuals return to their family homes. The consequences for their wives, children and other family members are thus foreseeable.

But perhaps the most chilling revelation is how ordinary all of this becomes. These aren’t just accounts of soldiers caught up in the chaos of battle. They’re descriptions of an organised military bureaucracy, in which decisions with devastating human consequences are processed through technology, procedures and chains of command.

People discuss the killing of civilians with extraordinary detachment, as if they’re describing another routine day at work. And this raises another deeply troubling question: what happens to a society when its political and military leaders systematically normalise the dehumanisation of another people?

One interviewee describes how, after the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, the idea that there were no innocent people in Gaza was spread throughout the military. When an entire population is portrayed as collectively responsible, when civilian deaths become statistics, and when the destruction of homes and communities becomes an acceptable military objective, the boundaries of what's considered morally acceptable collapse.

This is how dehumanisation becomes normal. And it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the Israel's political and military leadership have deliberately produced this form of radicalisation from above, conditioning large sections of Israeli society to accept levels of violence against Palestinians that should be unthinkable.

NAZA isn’t simply about individual soldiers losing their moral compass. It's about a political and institutional culture that increasingly treats Palestinian lives as expendable. Of course, not all Israelis accept this. The courageous Israeli filmmakers behind NAZA, and the people willing to expose these practices, demonstrate that resistance is possible. But that only makes the wider normalisation of such violence more disturbing.

The documentary's cinematography reinforces this message. While interviewees calmly describe the machinery of killing, the camera moves across the illuminated apartment buildings of Tel Aviv. Families eat dinner, watch television and go about their ordinary lives.

Just 60 kilometres away, Palestinian families are being denied the same basic security.

The contrast is devastating. Ordinary life continues alongside extraordinary violence.

This is also what makes NAZA such effective filmmaking. Its strength lies in its restraint. It allows testimony, silence and ordinary images to expose the horror of what’s being described.

Israel's military rejects the documentary's allegations. But the filmmakers' extensive investigative work, together with years of corroborating evidence from Palestinian journalists, human rights organisations and international investigators, demands serious scrutiny and accountability.

The Hamas atrocities of 7 October were horrific crimes. But they don't justify the collective punishment, mass killing or destruction of the Palestinian population of Gaza. Genocide is not simply a question of how many people are killed. It concerns acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group.

In September 2025, an independent United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. NAZA adds to that evidence by exposing the decisions, systems and attitudes through which mass killing and destruction have been carried out.

For me, the cumulative evidence is unmistakable. What has occurred in Gaza is not simply the tragedy of war. It's genocide. And the responsibility doesn't stop with Israel. Australia and other Western allies have a particular responsibility to confront what is happening. We can't claim to uphold international law and human rights while applying different standards to our friends and supposed adversaries.

Nor can we claim ignorance when Palestinians have been telling us the truth for years. The courage of Abraham and Szor deserves enormous recognition. Both filmmakers have faced fierce hostility and threats for exposing the actions of their government and military. Their work reminds us that speaking out against atrocities is not an attack on a people or a religion. It’s a defence of our common humanity.

NAZA is confronting, disturbing and at times almost unbearable. It reminds us that genocide doesn't happen simply because a handful of individuals decide to commit terrible crimes. It becomes possible when political leaders, institutions and ordinary people come to accept the dehumanisation of others. And when the international community looks away.

NAZA is a must-see. Not because it tells us something Palestinians haven't already told us, but because it exposes the machinery behind their suffering and challenges us to confront our own silence, denial and complicity. When the history of Gaza is written, nobody will be able to say that the world did not know.

NAZA is a must see.