The Japan Times - In their words: Israeli forces describe AI-backed Gaza killing in new film

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor said they had collected evidence from 24 different Israeli military or intelligence figures who agreed to testify on camera in Tel Aviv as long as their identities were protected.

"We are letting the soldiers and the officers speak about what they did," Abraham told AFP.

"The goal was very simple: we wanted to hear in as much detail as possible, how the systems of killing in Gaza looked like, how they operated."

Their film, "NAZA", draws its name from a euphemism used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians that are expected to be killed in an airstrike.

It is the only documentary in competition at this year's Venice Film Festival which wraps up on Saturday.

"NAZA" sees Israeli servicemen and women describe in detail how the mass surveillance of Gaza, an occupied Palestinian territory where the entire telecoms network is monitored by Israel, was combined with AI technology to identify people for assassination.

"The mass surveillance is directly related to the mass killing, and it is what was able to also create a stream of justifications for the mass killing," Abraham, 31, told AFP.

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has left around 73,500 Palestinians dead and 174,500 wounded since October 2023, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the United Nations deems reliable.

The pounding of Gaza followed an attack inside Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, that resulted in the death of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

-- Oscar winners --

Along with Palestinians Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, Abraham and Szor shot to fame with their film "No Other Land" about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2025.

Their latest movie has been produced by Britain's Jim Wilson with help from Jonathan Glazer -- the team behind Auschwitz-set Oscar winner "The Zone of Interest" -- as well as Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Abraham and Szor, both investigative journalists, said they hoped it would encourage Western nations to drop their diplomatic backing and military support for Israel and apply pressure through sanctions.

"Those of us inside Israel and Palestine trying to fight for change, need it," Abraham said. "You are weakening the people inside who are supporting human rights and a political solution by refusing to act."

Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza, accusing Hamas of hiding among the population of the densely packed and besieged enclave where around two million people lived before the war.

But Abraham said he come to the conclusion that Israel's government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "violating the Genocide Convention of 1948" and was committed to expelling Gaza's population.

- Public opinion -

"NAZA" was a late addition to the top competition this year in Venice, where organisers have selected several films about the Gaza conflict.

"Citizen Osama", about a Gaza photojournalist struggling to find water and food and do his job, premiered last week and has since been chosen as the Palestinian entry to compete for best foreign film in the 2027 Academy Awards.

Last year, "The Voice of Hind Rajab", a gut-wrenching docu-drama about the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza by Israeli forces, picked up second prize at the festival.

The films, as well as increasing condemnation of Israel's conduct in Gaza from top entertainment figures, are part of a broad shift in public opinion in Western countries against the war and Israeli policies.

US actress Susan Sarandon, one of the most persistent critics of the war, claimed this week that the narrative around Gaza and the United States' financial and military support for Israel had "completely changed".

"There's a lot of things that people are aware of now," the "Thelma & Louise" star told a news conference.

Foreign journalists have been prevented from reporting from Gaza since the start of the conflict, other than under tightly controlled conditions with the Israeli military.

Some Israeli journalists have questioned the war "but it's very, very few, especially in the mainstream media they are just not. There's no stage for this," Szor told AFP.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says more than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, constituting "the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented".

M.Yamazaki--JT