There are films that illuminate the horrors of war, evoking sympathy in viewers for those affected, and others that immerse us in a more disturbing area—the mechanisms that make such horrors possible. The documentary NAZA, created by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, belongs to this third category. It prompts viewers to look beyond the tragically familiar images of destruction in Gaza and examine the systems, institutional cultures, and technological processes through which the annihilation of human lives can be organized, assessed, and justified.
The film received a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, where its premiere reportedly garnered extraordinary applause lasting about twenty-five minutes. This reaction was significant not only as recognition of cinematic mastery but also because the documentary was released at a time when the world was witnessing the devastation of Gaza on an almost unimaginable scale, while political institutions struggled to translate international concern into effective protection for Palestinians.
For readers in Iran and across West Asia, this film raises questions that extend far beyond Palestine. What happens when advanced technologies are used in the service of military hegemony? What becomes of human responsibility when decisions about life and death are mediated by databases, surveillance systems, algorithms, and calculations of acceptable civilian casualties? And what does it mean when the suffering of another people becomes part of the routine administrative process of waging war?
These questions are not merely about cinema or artificial intelligence; they touch upon the intersection of technology and power, the value of human life, and the moral obligations of societies capable of inflicting immense destruction.
Behind the Scenes of Destruction
The name NAZA refers to a military acronym related to estimates of expected civilian casualties during airstrikes. Its significance lies in the alarming distance between the technical language of military planning and the human realities that this language can conceal.
A bomb hitting a residential building is visible. The destruction of a hospital, the collapse of an apartment building, and the death of children are events that can be photographed and broadcast worldwide. However, the decisions preceding these events remain largely hidden. Someone must identify the target, gather intelligence, interpret information, set operational parameters, and authorize the use of force. Somewhere in this chain, a judgment is made about the probable consequences for civilians.
NAZA focuses attention on this hidden world. Through testimonies from Israeli military and intelligence personnel, many of whom speak anonymously, the documentary examines aspects of the systems used to identify targets and conduct military operations in Gaza. The filmmakers described their work as being based on journalistic investigations and testimonies from individuals familiar with these processes.
The film's importance lies in the questions it raises regarding institutional procedures and their human consequences. When military planners discuss projected casualties, what happens to the people represented by those numbers? When a target appears on a computer screen, does the operator see the family living in the house, or just an entry in the system? When civilian deaths are factored into operational calculations, who defines the moral boundaries of that calculation?
The film leads us to a fundamental question about modern warfare: how can the distance between the person authorizing an attack and the person killed beneath it become so vast that responsibility seems dissolved in a series of technical and administrative decisions? Destruction begins not when a missile reaches its target. It begins earlier, in the political decisions, institutional assumptions, and operational systems that make the attack possible.
The Testimony of Palestine, Heard from Within the System
For Palestinians, the destruction of homes, loss of family members, displacement, surveillance, and movement restrictions are not new discoveries. Palestinian journalists, doctors, human rights activists, and ordinary citizens have documented this reality for decades. Their testimonies have repeatedly described the consequences of occupation, blockade, settlement expansion, and the denial of national self-determination.
Nevertheless, Palestinian narratives have often faced a troubling imbalance in the international public discourse. Palestinian reports have frequently been subjected to demands for further verification, qualification, or political explanation, even when people were describing their own experiences. Their suffering has too often been treated as something that first needs to be established to satisfy distant political powers before it can elicit an adequate response.
The Israeli documentary, examining military systems from the inside, offers another entry point for an audience that may have previously been reluctant to confront these issues. It does not create a Palestinian narrative nor does it legitimize the experience that Palestinians have described for generations. Rather, it opens a window into the institutional world from which some decisions affecting the lives of Palestinians are made.
This distinction matters. Palestinians do not need outsiders to validate their humanity for them. Their lives have value regardless of whether their suffering is recognized by an Israeli filmmaker, a European audience, or an international organization.
However, testimony from within a military institution can shed light on how institutional procedures function, how decisions are formulated, and how individuals perceive their role in a larger system. NAZA opens another door to questions that Palestinian witnesses have long posed to the world. Its achievements should be understood in this context, without confusing the recognition of Palestinian suffering by a new audience with the much longer struggle of the Palestinians themselves to have their voices heard.
A New Machine for Old Political Relations
One of the film's most crucial arguments is the link between technological innovation and political continuity. Artificial intelligence, algorithmic analysis, and surveillance systems can transform warfare, but they do not explain the political objectives for which these technologies are employed.
Gaza did not become a site of military destruction in October 2023 without history. The territory has long been under blockade, repeated military attacks, and severe movement restrictions long before the current catastrophe. The West Bank has experienced decades of occupation, settlement expansion, and military control, while East Jerusalem remains a central element of the unresolved struggle for Palestinian land, rights, and sovereignty.
Thus, the technological sophistication of modern warfare must be understood against the backdrop of this longer history. A new generation of surveillance systems does not erase the political relationship between occupier and occupied. An algorithm does not resolve the question of whose security takes priority, whose freedom is restricted, or whose life is endangered.
Technology can change the speed, scale, and methods of exerting military power. But a system can be technically complex without being morally justifiable. A calculation can be mathematically consistent without being ethically acceptable. An operation can be organized with exceptional efficiency and yet still require the most thorough legal and moral analysis.
For readers across West Asia, this issue resonates beyond Palestine. The region has experienced the consequences of military interventions, occupations, sanctions, and strategic competition. The destruction of civilian infrastructure and population displacement are not abstract topics for societies that have endured protracted conflict.
NAZA calls us to consider whether technological progress, divorced from political accountability and ethical constraints, can make military power more effective without making it more humane.
When People Become Administrative Categories
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the film is how technical language can distance decision-makers from the people affected by their choices. A family becomes a potential casualty figure. A residential building becomes a target. A neighborhood becomes an operational zone. The death of a child becomes one component of a statistical assessment.
Once people are translated into administrative categories, it becomes easier to discuss their destruction without confronting its full meaning. The lexicon of calculation can create an illusion of distance, as if the moral weight of an action diminishes when expressed through a technical formula.
But no terminology can change the underlying reality. A child killed in an airstrike is not a statistical abstraction for parents who lost that child. A destroyed home is not just damaged infrastructure for a family whose memories, possessions, and sense of belonging vanished with it. A demolished neighborhood is not merely a geographical change for people whose community once existed there.
Behind every civilian casualty is a life with relationships, aspirations, and an unwritten future. Behind every destroyed home is a story that cannot be restored by simply replacing concrete and steel. This is why the film should not be reduced to a morality tale about a few individuals. Its deeper challenge concerns the institutions where decisions are made, the assumptions governing those institutions, and the political environment that determines what is acceptable.
Technology Does Not Free Its Creators
There is a growing tendency to discuss artificial intelligence in warfare as if the technology itself has acquired independent will. When an automated system contributes to a destructive outcome, it is difficult to assign responsibility. Was it the software developer, the intelligence analyst, the commander, or the political leadership?
These questions are complex, but their complexity cannot serve as an excuse to evade responsibility. Technological systems are created by humans and implemented in institutions that define their goals and limitations. Even when automated processes play a significant role, decisions on the use of force remain embedded in political and military structures. The presence of complex technology does not eliminate the obligations of those who design, authorize, control, and use it.
International humanitarian law requires distinguishing between civilians and combatants, applying the principle of proportionality, and taking feasible precautions in attack. These obligations cannot simply be delegated to an algorithm or dissolved in a technical assessment. The question is not whether a machine can process information faster than a human. The question is whether the entire system maintains meaningful accountability for the consequences of its decisions.
A world where the technology of destruction advances faster than the institutions of accountability is a world in which the civilian population remains dangerously vulnerable.