Why this desk exists, and why we stand with Abraham and Szor

What you are reading

nazafilm.org is an unofficial support desk. It is not The Guardian, JW Films, mk2, the Biennale, or the filmmakers, unless they ask. The news column is a clip-file: we log public coverage and send you to the outlet. This page is the opposite of that column. Every sentence below is ours. Every factual claim has a URL in the source list.

We wrote it because AdSense, Search, and anyone arriving cold need a document that could not have been pasted from a feed. A headline plus a stock footer is not publisher content. An argument with dates, names, and links is.

Our position is not hidden. Abraham and Szor made a documentary. They have a right to show it. A minister’s post is not a court. A citizenship threat is not a review. Watch the film. Do not invent PayPal in their names.

What the film puts on the record

NAZA is an 80-minute 2026 documentary directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, produced by The Guardian and JW Films, and listed in Venice’s official competition. The Biennale page is the clean production credit. The title, as the producing paper, AFP, and the Jerusalem Post print, is Israeli military slang for expected civilian deaths in a strike — “collateral” counted in advance.

AFP’s 10 September dispatch, carried by France 24, is the production record we keep next to the Guardian review: nearly three years of interviews; 24 Israeli military or intelligence voices, on camera in Tel Aviv, identities protected; Abraham saying the aim was to hear how the systems of killing operated. The same dispatch quotes him tying mass surveillance of Gaza’s telecoms to mass killing, and quotes Szor on how few Israeli mainstream desks asked the same questions. Those are their sentences. They are not ours invented for a word count.

The Guardian’s 10 September review and its 14 September news story are the English record most desks used first: targeting systems the directors say sit behind mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. One source, in the Guardian’s account of the film, claims approval to kill hundreds of expected civilians to hit one Hamas member. That is the film’s testimony as reported. It is not a number this desk invented.

The IDF rejected the film after Venice. The Jerusalem Post quotes a categorical denial and a complaint that anonymous roles could not be verified. We print that denial because a record that hides the army’s sentence is a smear sheet, not a desk. We do not treat the denial as a verdict that erases the interviews.

Abraham and Szor are also two of the four directors of No Other Land, with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, which won the 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The National’s 15 September piece names James Wilson of JW Films as producer and Jonathan Glazer as executive producer. Those facts are on the festival card. They are why “Oscar-winning directors” appears in every hostile post: the state is not arguing with unknowns.

Venice on Saturday, the state on Sunday

The Special Jury Prize was awarded at the 83rd Venice festival on 12 September 2026. The Guardian’s 14 September report is the number we keep for the premiere: a 25-minute standing ovation, which that paper called a festival record. The Guardian published the directors’ remarks the next day. Abraham’s line, on tape, is that it is important Israelis watch this film. That is the quote we keep. It is not a minister’s paraphrase.

On 14 September Culture Minister Miki Zohar wrote that the win was “horrifying,” called the filmmakers’ work treason, and said he would “act immediately” to revoke their Israeli citizenship. The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the Jerusalem Post all logged the post. A culture minister naming the Population Authority is still not a court order. Citizenship revocation in Israel, as The Hindu and JTA both note, runs through interior and judicial gates. The threat is the story. The threat is also the intimidation.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called them a disgrace. Netanyahu called the film intolerable and said it painted soldiers as war criminals. On 16 September Reuters recorded him promising two bills: one to strip citizenship from people who “defame” soldiers abroad, and one to multiply statutory defamation damages by twenty. He named NAZA. CPJ called that a move from rhetoric to a legal weapon. The bills had not become law when JTA wrote on 18 September.

President Isaac Herzog, on Channel 12 as JTA quotes him, said stripping their citizenship was “completely irrelevant” and had “no chance.” He still called the film a shame. That split matters. The presidency declined the nuclear option. The presidency did not defend the right to show the work. This desk does.

The Guardian’s 16 September follow-up logged protests, far-right activists, and a statement of support from 43 Israeli human rights groups. Deadline, the same day, printed a statement from former prime minister Naftali Bennett calling the film a “cowardly blood libel.” We log that sentence because it is on a URL. We do not treat it as a finding of fact. A former head of government repeating a blood-libel charge is part of the intimidation climate, not a review.

France 24’s 17 September report, with an AP photograph dated 15 September, describes a mural in Ashdod: the directors’ faces, the English word TRAITORS, red targets painted beside them. The same week’s joint letter, published in full by PEN International, is more specific than a generic “backlash.” On the Wednesday after Netanyahu’s bills, dozens protested outside Szor’s family home and promised the same at addresses tied to Abraham’s family. A video, the letter says, recorded the chant “death sentence for traitors.” Activists also broke into the offices of Local Call (Sicha Mekomit) and +972 Magazine, outlets that have published Abraham’s investigations. Street paint and a broken newsroom door are why the letter talks about vigilante violence, not only about tweets.

Who stood up, in print

On 18 September the International Press Institute published a joint letter with ten partner organisations. They asked Israeli authorities to end the official campaign, protect Abraham, Szor, and their families from the violence the letter says the rhetoric unleashed, and keep journalists free to scrutinise the army. CPJ posted the same ask the same morning and placed the case in a wider pattern of attacks on journalists, most of them Palestinian.

The signatories are on the PEN International page, not invented here: Committee to Protect Journalists; Freedom of the Press Foundation; Coalition For Women In Journalism; WAN-IFRA; the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism; Reporters Without Borders; Index on Censorship; PEN America; Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism; PEN International; and IPI. The letter cites Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a nationality that cannot be arbitrarily taken. This desk’s argument is the same sentence in plainer English: a film is not a treason file, and a bill that names a documentary is a warning shot at every Israeli reporter who might follow the same sources.

Ynet, on 19 September, reported a solidarity letter from more than a thousand filmmakers. That number is theirs. This desk does not host the petition and does not add names. We use 1,000+ as a floor until a later public count is printed. The letter’s point, as Ynet carries it, is that the vilification was approaching a sanction of violence.

Those two documents — the eleven-organisation letter and Ynet’s industry count — are why we refuse celebrity fiction. If a famous name is not on a URL we can open, it is not on this site.

What support is, on this desk

Abraham’s Venice instruction is operational. Buy a ticket where the film is listed: San Sebastián Perlak in late September, the New York Film Festival, then IFC Center if that date holds. Demand a hall in Israel. Those are public pages. This site does not sell seats and does not take a cut.

Read the journalism they already published — the Guardian, +972, Local Call — instead of a ministerial screenshot. Offer concrete help through the contact form: legal watch, a roof, a translation, a venue. Do not publish their travel or their family’s address.

As of 21 September 2026 there is still no verified personal donation page or legal-defence fund in their names that we can open. If one appears on a URL we can check twice, we will print it. Until then, a PayPal invented in a comments thread is a scam vector, not solidarity.

Why the clip-file still exists

The /news column will keep ingesting public RSS. That is a ledger, not a magazine. Google’s publisher policies do not allow ads on screens that scrape or lightly rewrite other sites, or on screens with more ads than publisher-content. Each briefing should send you to the outlet. Ads on a thin card are a policy problem, not a growth plan. The sentences that are ours — this essay, the accusations timeline, the defenders file, the showing desks, the note after a briefing — are the publisher content. If a story page is only a headline, it is a card. If you are a reviewer looking for pages only this desk could have written, start here, then open /record/timeline and /showings/san-sebastian.

We will not reprint other people’s articles to fatten a word count. That would violate the same Google rule: no ads against copied inventory. Commentary, curation, and a dated argument are the allowed add. This page is that add.