Dossier mode
The System and Its Cogs
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Israeli Influence on the United States hub.
The System and Its Cogs.
NAZA: 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers describe the machinery of the Gaza war from the inside — the software that generated the targets, the rule that let a junior militant be killed with fifteen civilians, the word they used for those civilians. The doctrine, the scale, and now the machine.
NAZA — Hebrew nezek agavi, 'collateral damage' — is an 80-minute documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (Guardian-produced, Glazer exec-produced), 24 disguised Israeli military/intelligence insiders describing targeting from inside. Most of the facts were already reported in 2024 (+972/Local Call: Lavender, 'Where's Daddy?', the Gospel); the film's new contribution is the operators saying it on camera. It's the third thing beside the Dahiya doctrine and the death toll: the method, in the perpetrators' own voices.
EXTREME-sensitivity dual-stance. FACT: the film/prizes/testimony + the systems themselves (documented 2024, corroborated here). FACT carried prominently: Israeli filmmakers + Israeli insiders = reckoning from within, not an outside smear; Oct 7 remains the atrocity that began the war. SOME SMOKE (posed): that this proves GENOCIDAL INTENT. Genocide turns on intent-to-destroy, inferred from method/statement/repetition — NAZA is exactly that category of evidence, but a film is not a court. Tie to ICJ (South Africa) + ICC Nov 2024 warrants; pose, don't rule. Fence: carry the IDF denial in full (incl. its rejection of the 500-casualty strike claim); anonymous testimony is evidence, not a verdict; 'AI decided' vs 'AI advised a human' is genuinely contested. Cover SOME_SMOKE.
NAZA is a real, award-winning documentary by Israeli filmmakers — 24 insider testimonies, not a fringe artifact.
The provenance is on the record. NAZA (from nezek agavi, the IDF's own acronym for anticipated civilian deaths) is an 80-min film by Yuval Abraham — the +972/Local Call journalist who co-directed the Oscar-winning 'No Other Land' — and Rachel Szor, produced by the Guardian, exec-produced by Jonathan Glazer ('The Zone of Interest'). It premiered at Venice in Sept 2026 as the only documentary competing for the Golden Lion, won the Special Jury Prize, and drew a ~25-minute standing ovation (Variety). Its substance: 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, filmed on Tel Aviv rooftops with faces and voices disguised because of the risk of speaking out.
The targeting systems are real and pre-date the film — NAZA corroborates them from the inside.
The machinery was first reported in April 2024 by Abraham for +972/Local Call, from six intelligence officers. 'Lavender': an AI system flagging suspected low-ranking militants — ~37,000 potential targets early in the war — reviewed for as little as 20 seconds each despite a known ~10% error rate. 'Where's Daddy?': tracked flagged men and signaled when they went home, to be struck there with their families. 'Habsora' ('The Gospel'): generated building targets. Pre-set 'collateral' allowances: ~15–20 civilians permitted for one junior target, far higher for senior ones. That the systems exist was established two years before the film and is not seriously disputed; NAZA's insiders now describe them on camera.
The film's new contribution is first-person testimony from the operators — graded as testimony, not a ledger.
What NAZA adds is the voices. A Lavender developer, asked if innocents were killed by misidentification: 'Yes for sure. There's no doubt.' Another, asked how many died from a system he built: 'more than hundreds, if not thousands … masses of people.' The collapse of restraint: 'at the start of the war, we bombed everything; NAZA wasn't an issue.' The euphemism that logged anticipated dead as a number — '15 NAZA' rather than fifteen people, some children. The surveillance reach — access to the cameras and mics of Palestinians' phones — that made one feel 'a bit like God.' FACT that the film contains this testimony (per the Guardian and reviewers). We don't overstate the format: the witnesses are anonymous and disguised, individual claims can't be checked one by one — corroborating insider accounts, not a verified ledger.
The IDF rejects the film — and we carry the denial in full.
Israel's military strongly disputes NAZA: it says humans, not AI, make targeting decisions; that systems like Lavender assist analysts rather than approving strikes; that commanders assess expected civilian harm, take feasible precautions, and cancel strikes when risk is too high; and it specifically rejects the allegation that it approved a strike anticipating 500 civilian deaths. Many in Israel condemned the directors for making it. FACT that this is the IDF's position. The 'the system decided' vs 'the system only advised a human who decided' dispute is genuine and unresolved from the outside — a place to keep eyes open, not assume the worst reading is proven.
That the machinery proves genocidal intent is the posed question — serious, sourced, and the courts' to rule on.
The hinge. Genocide is distinguished in law by one element: the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part, as such — almost never admitted, so inferred from statements, methods, and their repetition. NAZA is, by design, methods + statements from inside: a system accepting large civilian death counts by default; a published doctrine (Dahiya) prescribing disproportion; operators describing a belief that 'there were no uninvolved civilians.' That is the category of evidence a genocide inquiry weighs. But a documentary is not a court, insider testimony is not a verdict, and lawful-but-devastating urban war can yield much of the same testimony — the law's bar for intent is deliberately high. SOME SMOKE, posed: the method is fact; whether it clears that bar is the question before the ICJ (South Africa's case) and behind the ICC's Nov 2024 warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. We don't get ahead of their answer.
The line we hold.
- FACT: NAZA is real — Israeli dirs Abraham (co-dir of the Oscar-winning 'No Other Land') & Szor, Guardian-produced, Glazer exec-produced; Venice Special Jury Prize; 24 disguised Israeli military/intel insiders.
- FACT: the systems pre-date the film — Lavender (~37,000 targets, ~20-sec reviews, ~10% error), 'Where's Daddy?' (strike at home with family), the Gospel (building targets), ~15–20 civilians allowed per junior target — all reported April 2024 by +972/Local Call; NAZA corroborates on camera.
- FACT (the new part): first-person operator testimony — 'Yes for sure. There's no doubt' (innocents killed); 'masses of people'; '15 NAZA'; 'we bombed everything'; 'a bit like God.' Anonymous/disguised: corroborating accounts, not a verified ledger.
- FACT: the IDF rejects the film (humans not AI decide; Lavender only assists; denies the 500-casualty strike). Carried in full; 'AI decided vs AI advised' is genuinely contested.
- SOME SMOKE (posed): that this proves GENOCIDAL INTENT. Intent is inferred from method+statement+repetition — NAZA is exactly that — but a film ≠ a court. Tie to ICJ (South Africa) + ICC Nov 2024 warrants; pose, don't rule.
- DUAL-STANCE FENCE: Israeli filmmakers + Israeli insiders exposing their own military is a reckoning from within, NOT antisemitism; Oct 7 remains the atrocity that began the war; testimony is evidence to weigh, not a verdict. What survives: the systems are real, the operators described them, and the description belongs in front of the courts now weighing it.
Why it matters.
The most effective defense of any mass-harm system is that no one chose it — that the deaths were the friction of war, a few bad actors, the unavoidable cost of fighting an enemy who hides among civilians. NAZA's quiet power is that it is told by the opposite of bad actors: ordinary, competent people who built and ran the machine and, for the most part, believed they were doing their jobs. That is what a system is — it doesn't require monsters, it requires cogs and a logic that lets each cog turn without feeling responsible. The word 'NAZA' is the tell: a term whose whole function is to let a planner write down the number a strike will kill without having to picture them. It matters to be precise about what's new, because overclaiming is how a real story gets waved away: almost none of the facts here are first disclosed by the film — Lavender, 'Where's Daddy?', the 20-second reviews, the pre-set allowances were public in 2024. What's new is the operators saying it themselves, on camera, about their own hands — which is not new evidence of what happened but new evidence of how it was understood by the people who did it, exactly the evidence intent turns on. The directors drew the line: their subject is 'not sporadic war crimes committed by rogue soldiers' but 'the orders themselves, the policies, the accepted practices … the system and its cogs.' We are not qualified to render the verdict and we do not. But the record will not be able to claim no one knew how it worked.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenThe full, unedited testimony and the filmmakers' underlying material — the basis on which a court or independent investigator could test each insider claim beyond the film's edit.
- OpenIndependent authentication of the specific disputed allegations (above all the 500-anticipated-casualty strike the IDF denies) against operational records.
- OpenThe ICJ's eventual ruling in South Africa v. Israel and the disposition of the ICC warrants — the findings that will decide whether the method NAZA documents meets the law's bar for intent.