If Yuval Avraham and Rachel Szor imagine that a 25-minute standing ovation in Venice is a sign that the anti-Zionist cultural elites abroad have embraced them completely, they’re living in an alternate universe. Certainly after Oct. 7, 2023, when the murderers, rapists and kidnappers from Gaza didn’t bother to inquire about the political views of their victims before torturing and murdering them.
Like so many progressive Jews at home and in the Diaspora, the two Israeli screenwriters who won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival for “NAZA” fail to grasp a tragic irony: Those applauding them for their woke ideology and auto-antisemitism don’t consider them allies. Not deep down.
Yes, the audience applauding Avraham and Szor was mainly delighted that Israeli Jews were providing the most effective propaganda weapon against the Jewish state and its military.
The phenomenon isn’t new, not even where the deceitful duo is concerned. They are two of the four creators of “No Other Land,” the 2024 documentary about “settler violence” against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria that won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Naturally. Demonizing Israeli settlers is almost a guaranteed ticket to success in the world of arts and entertainment.
But that’s nothing compared to the kind of accolades sure to be received when vilifying the Israel Defense Forces—particularly since the beginning of the current war, which has unleashed a wave of antisemitism not seen since the Holocaust. This includes blood libels about “genocide” and “starvation” supposedly perpetrated by Israeli soldiers against “innocent” Palestinians in Gaza.
Enter “NAZA.”
Though Avraham and Szor wrote the screenplay, the production is British. Therefore, the use of the Latin transliteration of a title derived from Hebrew initials that mean nothing in English was clearly intentional. After all, the concept has an exact translation: “collateral damage.” Yet that wasn’t what the movie was called.
The reason is that visually, “NAZA” looks like a mash-up of “NAZI” and “GAZA.”
Fair enough. Hamas terrorists aren’t merely sadists reminiscent of the Nazis; copies of Mein Kampf and photographs of Hitler were found by IDF soldiers in numerous homes throughout the Strip. Of course, facts of this sort don’t interest the producers and directors of “NAZA,” among them the British newspaper The Guardian.
The film draws on content published in that paper, as well as in outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call—all three firmly on the far left.
The plot of the drama-disguised-as-a-documentary is based on anonymous testimony from 24 soldiers in the elite Unit 8200, under the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate. These purported “insiders” were filmed on rooftops in Tel Aviv, with their faces and voices distorted to protect their identities.
How convenient for all the accusers involved: They can tell whatever stories they like without having to produce a shred of evidence for their false claims of the targeted mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
Government officials and the IDF responded with anger and outrage. Nearly the entire political spectrum condemned Avraham and Szor. The notable exceptions were the Arab parties and The Democrats, led by Yair Golan.
That’s hardly surprising. Golan, a retired major general who served as deputy IDF chief of staff, caused an uproar in May 2025 when he suggested that Israel was “killing babies in Gaza as a hobby.” He later claimed that he had meant to refer to the government, not the army, stating that the military “is in my home and in my heart.” But nobody believed him—neither his supporters nor his detractors.
Something similar can be said about the reaction to Avraham and Szor. The couple currently basking in the spotlight assumed—and still seem to believe—that loudly denouncing their homeland would earn them membership in the anti-Zionist family beyond the borders of the Jewish state. But some of the responses they received from Israel-haters demonstrate just how conditional that love is.
One post on X, for example, described the production as “more shooting and crying award fodder.”
Another, on Reddit, called the film “a big psyop,” going on to state, “I’m Palestinian. I think that the movie is a way to Israeli society to launder their image. Also having two Israelis believed after seeing so much doubt about Palestinian reporting, leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.”
Freed hostage Liri Albag summed up the phenomenon perfectly on Instagram. Addressing Avraham, she said, “You know that even if you were only in the army for two weeks and got discharged because of your political views, if you’d fallen into Hamas captivity, to them you’d have been a soldier regardless? And they probably would have abused you for being a soldier.”
As we have learned from all the released hostages, even if he hadn’t served in the IDF, he would have been beaten and sexually tormented. Indeed, siding with the enemy has never protected Jews from the literal and figurative gas chambers.
