Israel’s Culture Minister Threatens to Revoke the Citizenship of ‘NAZA’ Filmmakers
Developed over time first seen 2 months ago
Israel's Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, said he will seek to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over their new documentary NAZA, branding it "vile" and accusing them of treason. The film, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, presents testimony from 24 Israeli military officers detailing systems they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. Zohar tied his reaction to reforms he has led to Israel's film funding system, saying the changes mean Israelis will no longer have to "pay out of their own pockets" for content he considers harmful to the military and the state; the threat drew no indication of any actual legal mechanism being pursued and appears to have remained rhetorical.
Neither NAZA nor Abraham's previous film, No Other Land, received Israeli public funding; NAZA was produced partly with support from The Guardian. In his Venice acceptance speech, Abraham criticised Israeli politicians and journalists for "attacking" and denying the film without watching it, while co-director Rachel Szor said the soldiers featured spoke in Hebrew so more Israelis would hear what happened in Gaza. The row echoes Zohar's earlier criticism of No Other Land after its 2024 Oscar win, and follows his overhaul of Israel's film-financing system, which shifted public money away from politically sensitive independent projects towards more commercially oriented films after the Palestinian-focused drama The Sea won Israel's top film honour last year.
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In short
- Israeli minister threatens to strip citizenship from NAZA filmmakers over Gaza documentary
- Film alleges IDF systems target civilians, based on 24 officers' testimony
- Follows minister's earlier clash with Oscar-winning No Other Land filmmakers
How this story developed
- 2 months ago Israel's Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, has said he will seek to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over their new documentary NAZA, branding it "vile" and accusing them of treason.
- 2 months ago Israel's Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, has said he will seek to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over their new documentary NAZA, branding the film "vile" and accusing them of treason.
- 2 months ago Israel's Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, said he will seek to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over their new documentary NAZA, branding it "vile" and accusing them of treason.
- 2 months ago Israel's Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, has said he will seek to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over their new documentary NAZA, branding the film "vile" and accusing them of treason.
- Deadline Israel’s Culture Minister Calls For Oscar-Winning Israeli Filmmakers Behind Gaza Doc ‘NAZA’ To Lose Their Citizenship
- The Guardian Israeli minister threatens to strip Israeli film-makers of citizenship over Gaza documentary NAZA
- The Hollywood Reporter Israel’s Culture Minister Threatens to Revoke the Citizenship of ‘NAZA’ Filmmakers
Full account
Israel's Culture Minister, Miki Zohar, has said he intends to strip the Israeli citizenship of Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Oscar-winning filmmakers behind the new documentary NAZA, after the film took the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The documentary draws on testimony from roughly two dozen Israeli military officers who describe the internal systems and protocols they say the armed forces have used to authorise civilian deaths during the war in Gaza. Its title borrows the Israeli military's own shorthand acronym for what it classifies as acceptable collateral damage.
Posting in Hebrew on X shortly after the award was announced, Zohar branded the film 'vile' and accused its creators of self-hatred and betrayal of the state, saying their conduct amounted to treason carried out to win praise from Israel's critics abroad. He tied the outburst to funding changes he has pushed through this year, arguing that the win vindicated his overhaul of state support for cinema so that taxpayers no longer help finance work he regards as damaging to the reputation of Israeli soldiers and the country itself. He said that, as culture minister, he would move to have the pair's citizenship revoked.
This is not the first clash between Zohar and the film-making duo, who were previously among the four directors of No Other Land, which won the Academy Award for best documentary and which Zohar likewise condemned at the time, though that film never received a commercial release in Israel or the Palestinian territories and was instead made available free online. Earlier this year Zohar restructured Israel's film-financing system, redirecting public money away from independent and politically charged projects towards films with broader commercial appeal, a shift he has described as ending an era in which Israeli soldiers were maligned at public expense. Like No Other Land, NAZA received no Israeli state funding and was instead backed in part by the British newspaper The Guardian. Reaction has not come from the government alone: former prime minister Naftali Bennett also condemned the film in the days around its premiere, defending Israeli soldiers and reservists and rejecting the suggestion that the film's allegations amounted to genocide.
The film-makers have pushed back against the criticism. Accepting the prize in Venice, Abraham addressed the politicians and journalists attacking the film without having seen it, arguing that accounts of civilian deaths in Gaza have been documented since the earliest days of the war, largely through the work of Palestinian journalists, more than 200 of whom he said had been killed. Szor said the Israeli soldiers and officers featured in the documentary chose to speak in Hebrew specifically so their testimony would reach a domestic audience. Abraham has said the film currently has no distribution deal in Israel but that he and Szor hope to secure as wide a release as possible there, as well as in the United States and Germany, both major suppliers of arms to Israel.
Where outlets differ
From the full account, which is AI-written from the sources:
Source 2 quotes Zohar's statement in full, including the original Hebrew text, whereas Source 1 gives only a paraphrase and shorter extracts.
Source 2 reports Zohar pledging to act 'immediately', while Source 1 characterises it as a pledge to 'work to' revoke citizenship — a difference in urgency.
Only Source 2 mentions the film's reception detail (a 25-minute standing ovation) and the specific, elastic casualty figures cited in the film (ranging from under a dozen to 200–500 per strike), and only Source 2 reports former PM Naftali Bennett's condemnation of the film.
Only Source 1 covers the film-makers' response in detail — Abraham's Venice acceptance speech, his comments to The Hollywood Reporter on distribution plans, and Szor's remark about why interviewees spoke Hebrew — as well as the broader context of Zohar's film-funding reforms and the earlier Ophir Awards controversy over The Sea.
Source 1 notes NAZA's partial backing from The Guardian; this is not mentioned in Source 2.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of the filmmakers would argue that documentary journalism drawing on the direct testimony of serving and former officers is precisely the kind of public-interest scrutiny a healthy democracy needs, especially when international juries and critics have judged the work rigorous rather than propagandistic. They would note that the directors chose to have their subjects speak in Hebrew specifically so Israeli citizens, not just foreign audiences, would hear the accounts, suggesting an intent to prompt domestic reflection rather than to damage the country abroad. They would further warn that threatening to strip citizenship over a film – a measure normally reserved for the gravest offences such as terrorism – risks conflating legitimate criticism of military conduct with treason, chilling artistic and press freedom and setting a precedent that could be turned against any future government critic.
The case against
Those sympathetic to the minister's position would argue that publicising detailed testimony about how targeting decisions were made during an active war, however well-intentioned, can furnish material that hostile actors exploit and may endanger soldiers still in the field, regardless of the filmmakers' motives. They would point out that the project was made without Israeli public funding and financed and platformed partly through a foreign outlet, which they might see as evidence that its primary audience and impact lie outside Israel, shaping international opinion at a sensitive moment rather than fostering internal debate. They would also contend that an elected government has a legitimate mandate to decide how state cultural funding is spent, and that steering it towards broadly popular productions rather than works it considers one-sided is a defensible policy choice, distinct from any question of banning the film outright, since it remains free to be made, shown and discussed.
Explained simply
Political leaders in Israel and elsewhere occasionally hold powers, or claim powers, to strip citizenship from individuals accused of harming the state, typically reserved for serious offences such as treason or terrorism. Miki Zohar is Israel's Culture Minister, a government post with influence over public funding for the arts, including film. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are filmmakers who previously won international acclaim, including an Oscar, for a documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and this background matters because it sets up a clash between the government and independent filmmakers over how the Gaza war is portrayed on screen.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the war in Gaza that followed the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, has been the subject of intense international scrutiny, including over how Israeli forces have conducted military operations and the resulting civilian casualties. Documentary films examining this subject have become politically contentious in Israel, with some receiving international prizes while facing criticism at home from officials who see them as damaging to the country's reputation. Public funding for Israeli cinema has also become a point of dispute, with debates over whether taxpayer money should support films critical of state policy.
This story sits at the intersection of free expression, government authority and wartime politics, since a threat by a government minister to revoke the citizenship of filmmakers over a documentary's content raises questions about press freedom and the limits of state power over artists, regardless of one's view on the film itself.
Coverage · 3 sources
- The Hollywood ReporterIsrael’s Culture Minister Threatens to Revoke the Citizenship of ‘NAZA’ Filmmakers
- DeadlineIsrael’s Culture Minister Calls For Oscar-Winning Israeli Filmmakers Behind Gaza Doc ‘NAZA’ To Lose Their Citizenship
- The GuardianLeftIsraeli minister threatens to strip Israeli film-makers of citizenship over Gaza documentary NAZA
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