In the week since their new documentary “NAZA” premiered at Venice Film Festival, directors Yuval Abraham (a reporter for +972 Magazine) and Rachel Szor have been the target of relentless attacks from Israel’s government and far-right activists.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Culture Minister Miki Zohar have threatened to revoke the directors’ citizenship. Government and opposition figures alike have accused them of “treason” and labeled them “enemies” of the state — rhetoric that has been echoed by much of the Israeli media. The military is also reportedly considering legal action against those involved in the film.
Equally concerning is the violent rhetoric and actions of far-right activists, who have staged protests in recent days outside the houses of the filmmakers’ families, chanting “Death penalty for traitors.” A large mural showing Yuval and Rachel’s faces emblazoned with the word “Traitors” and surrounded by crosshairs appeared in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod; videos of its creation that were posted online drew hundreds of inciting comments, including calls for their murder.
On Wednesday, far-right activists showed up at the Tel Aviv office shared by +972 and Local Call. They aggressively confronted our staff members, filming and harassing them in videos they later uploaded to social media. For their immediate safety, our team was forced to evacuate the office.
These attacks did not come out of nowhere. There is a direct line connecting decades of Israeli domination over Palestinians, the past three years of genocide in Gaza and extreme dehumanization of Palestinians between the river and the sea, and now the campaign of harassment and intimidation against Israeli Jews who resist Israel’s militaristic and supremacist consensus.
“NAZA” is produced by the Guardian and builds on investigations that Yuval wrote for +972 and Local Call throughout the past three years. While most of the people attacking the film and its directors have yet to even watch it, much of the information it contains is already public — first and foremost thanks to Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza, over 250 of whom have been killed by Israeli attacks.
Meanwhile, Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank are routinely detained by Israeli forces and face widespread movement obstacles and restrictions. Israel is currently holding 39 journalists from the West Bank and Gaza in its notoriously brutal prisons, over half of them without charge or trial.
When the people who document and expose reality are met with violent persecution, it only demonstrates how much those in power fear the truth. But silence is not an option.
We welcome the support for our colleagues shown by a minority of Israeli journalists, filmmakers, and civil society organizations. We call on people of conscience and governments around the world to oppose the campaign of persecution and violent threats against Yuval and Rachel, and to protect the rights of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the West Bank along with all those who stand against Israel’s genocide, occupation, and apartheid regime.
