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The National: Netanyahu joins ministers attacking NAZA after Venice
Written by The National
Briefing from The National. Original reporting stays with the outlet.
The Abu Dhabi daily reports Netanyahu’s Telegram attack on ‘global anti-Semitic incitement’ and notes Zohar cannot revoke citizenship alone.
David Tusing’s report in The National, dated 14 September 2026 and updated on 16 September, leads with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than with the culture minister’s letter. Netanyahu, in a Telegram video on Monday, accused the film of contributing to what he called global anti-Semitic incitement. The sentences The National quotes match the video The Guardian also reported: it is shocking, he says, when that incitement comes from within, and two Israeli directors who portray the military as war criminals are receiving applause in Venice. The National’s addition is the platform, Telegram, and the place of this video in a wider reaction. It says two ministers had already called for Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor to lose their citizenship after the Special Jury Prize on Saturday.
The National’s account of the film is the familiar one: 80 minutes, 24 intelligence officers and soldiers, filmed at night on Tel Aviv rooftops, including a claim that one strike on a Hamas member was approved with as many as 500 civilians at risk. What it adds on the state response is Eyal Zamir. The National says the chief of staff ordered a legal investigation to identify the sources in the film. The Guardian the same day said military lawyers were examining measures concerning the film and those involved. The National’s verb is identification of the people who spoke.
The National says audience members held Palestinian flags during an ovation of about 24 and a half minutes. Jury member Kaouther Ben Hania, whose The Voice of Hind Rajab had won Venice’s Silver Lion the year before, praised the anonymous testimonies as “cogs in a bigger machine,” not a film about feelings. She said the directors were filming events still under way and called the genocide ongoing. Abraham, accepting, said denial helps a crime persist, which is why Israelis should see the film. He said Palestinian journalists had documented the truth from the first day, and that more than 200 of them had been killed by Israel in Gaza.
The National also prints the limit: Zohar cannot revoke citizenship alone. A breach of loyalty, including treason and espionage, would still need further government and legal action. It notes that he had already attacked the Oscar for No Other Land, the film Abraham and Szor made with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal. The ministerial record is at https://nazafilm.org/record/timeline. Public defences are at https://nazafilm.org/record/defenders. Screenings are at https://nazafilm.org/showings and the watch page is https://nazafilm.org/watch.
This desk
Desk file · Citizenship
A minister can post. He cannot, by posting, take their passports.
The National, Sep 14, 2026 — one clip in this file. The note was written for the file, not from the headline.
On 14 September 2026 Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, wrote that the Venice prize was horrifying, called the work of Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor treason, and said he would act immediately to revoke their citizenship. The Guardian, Al Jazeera, the Jerusalem Post, and DW all logged that post. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir added “disgrace” and told them to leave. Those sentences are public. They are still not a court file.
Citizenship in Israel is not a culture-portfolio switch. JTA and The Hindu both spell the gate: Interior, then further government and judicial steps, and a narrow statutory idea of breach of loyalty. Zohar can write to the Population Authority. He cannot, from X, cancel two passports. This desk prints that limit every time a clip repeats “stripped.” The threat is real. The completed act is not.
On 16 September Reuters recorded Benjamin Netanyahu promising two bills and naming NAZA: one to take citizenship from people who “defame” soldiers abroad, one to multiply statutory defamation damages by twenty. Deadline printed his “hit them in their pockets and also in their citizenship.” CPJ called that a move from rhetoric to a legal weapon. When JTA wrote on 18 September the bills were still bills. President Isaac Herzog, on Channel 12 in that same piece, said revocation was “completely irrelevant” and had “no chance.” He still called the film a shame. The presidency refused the nuclear option. It did not defend the right to show the work.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s “cowardly blood libel,” as Deadline has it, belongs in this file as climate, not as a finding. A former head of government repeating a blood-libel charge is pressure on two journalists, not a review of 24 interviews. We do not treat it as a verdict on the footage.
This unofficial desk’s position is one sentence: Abraham and Szor made a documentary; a film is not a treason docket; watch it. We will not invent a donation page while someone is shouting “revoke.” If a later statute actually passes, we will date that. Until then, “citizenship stripped” in a headline is a minister’s wish, not the Population Authority’s stamp.
Unofficial. We support Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. We do not reprint the outlet and we do not invent a donation page.
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