For those who’ve followed +972’s coverage of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza closely, much of the content of the new documentary “NAZA,” whose premiere I attended in Venice last week, will be familiar. Certainly, it exposes the inner workings of Israel’s killing systems in greater detail than ever before; and there is real power, too, in putting many of the revelations we’ve published in a series of investigations by Yuval Abraham, one of the film’s directors (together with Rachel Szor), in one place. 

But “NAZA” (a Hebrew military acronym meaning “collateral damage”) is more than an account of how AI algorithms, panoptic surveillance, and unrestrained strike policies enabled a level of civilian slaughter beyond almost anything we’ve seen in modern warfare. Through anonymized interviews with some of the soldiers responsible, the film also provides a brutal illustration of the dehumanization of Palestinians in the Israeli psyche — and a study in how an entire society can comply with genocide.

People around the world have watched in horror as Israeli ground troops in Gaza revelled in their crimes on social media: shooting indiscriminately, burning homes, detonating residential blocks, and posing with the underwear of displaced Palestinian women. But “NAZA” shines a spotlight on a very different kind of Israeli soldier: the intelligence officers considered Israel’s “best and brightest.” 

Although they tend to be secular, upper-middle-class, and see themselves as liberal, it is these individuals — sitting behind screens inside Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv — who are responsible for overseeing mass killing on a scale far greater than anything the messianic-Kahanist soldiers on the front lines could do. And what was so disturbing for me about “NAZA” is not merely what these soldiers say they did, but the apparent ease with which they were able to do it.

One soldier claims there were “no Arab haters” in his team; they simply authorized the killing of hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians between them because they had a “mission” to complete. Another described the whole thing as being “like a video game.” Another said he would oversee airstrikes that he knew, through intrusive surveillance, would kill entire families — and then go out with friends in the evening in Tel Aviv. 

The Palestinians they kill don’t seem to register with these soldiers as human beings; as one puts it, he gave them “zero” consideration. The message from Israel’s politicians after October 7 was that “there are no innocents in Gaza,” and the army turned this slogan into policy.

Another soldier in the film went further: “The feeling was that it was really fun.” One even explained that his commander offered to bring in a psychologist for the soldiers to speak to, in order to help them grapple with any moral qualms, but “there was really no need.” Everyone in the system, even these “liberal” conscripts, willingly played their part in the mass destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza; according to the interviewees, they did not witness a single refused order or act of resistance.

It is impossible, upon watching this film, not to think about the systems of conformity that have produced such widespread genocidal compliance — the schools, the media, the political doublespeak. Given the near-total absence of opposition to the slaughter of Palestinians that we’ve seen within Israel over the past three years, none of this should come as a surprise. 

But in laying bare what Israel’s most esteemed soldiers did in their own horrifying words, “NAZA” offers a blistering indictment of just how deep the country’s rot goes, and the scale of deprogramming required for most Israelis to start to recognize Palestinians’ humanity. The incensed reaction the film is already generating inside Israel, before anyone has even seen it, only underscores this point.