On October 16, Channel 4 broadcast an interview with NAZA film producers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, during which they levelled accusations of genocide, amplified sensationalist claims that Israeli society has coalesced around the dehumanisation of the Palestinians, and erased discussion of Hamas’ asymmetric exploits.
The interviewer, Channel 4’s Europe Editor Matt Frei, inflamed tensions with pre-loaded questioning that permitted Israel’s military response to be viewed only through the prism of “revenge for October 7th” and a “complete disregard for human life.”
On October 22, CAMERA UK attended a screening of NAZA. This comparative analysis examines Channel 4’s framing of the discussion with Abraham and Szor against what the film itself portrays.
- Weaponisation of the Holocaust
During the Channel 4 interview, when discussing an unidentified soldier who alleged that the IDF committed “mass murders” at unnamed food distribution sites, Abraham states that there is something universal about “committing acts of killing because it is not something unique.” He suggests that the “genocide” is not a unique evil tied to Israel or Israelis, but rather something that has “recurred throughout history and it will happen again” and that “patterns of dehumanisation” will subsist and repeat [10:48-11:58] (See below).
Frei interjects, claiming that many of NAZA’s critics will likely say that the film equates the IDF’s actions with those of the Nazis. In response, Abraham states [12:22-13:07]:
Netanyahu also in the film speaks about the Holocaust. He talks about it in a different context. If the solider spoke about it in this attempt to understand what is universal, to draw a universal lesson. Netanyahu mentions the Holocaust in response to the fact that he got arrest warrants. He has equated in the past, not in the film, the judges in the International Criminal Court that issued these arrest warrants for war crimes to the German judges under Nazism. It is a choice to see how we think about that memory. Again, not to make a simplistic comparison, but do we draw a universal lesson? Do we think about something that can be applied for human rights for everyone in general? Or do we draw the kind of lesson that Netanyahu is trying to draw, which is much narrower, which seeks to justify, I believe more and more killing.
Yet what happened in the film itself? During CAMERA UK’s observation, one of the film’s four segments titled the ‘Annihilation Zone’ devoted more screen time to the unidentified soldier’s testimony of the IDF’s alleged “intentional massacres” at food distribution sites than to distinguishing between the “universal lessons” the film rhetorically offers its audience (as Abraham contends) and the “simplistic” equivalences between the IDF and the Nazis of which NAZA may be accused (See below).
Tellingly, at no point is this distinction explained in the film. It is obscured by non-chronological sequences of footage, enmeshed with decontextualised speeches by Netanyahu, imagery of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, and overlaid with the soldier’s narrated reflection upon visiting sites of the Holocaust in Poland: “I still see those Nazis as evil, so what does that make me?”
Viewers are presented with imagery of Holocaust Remembrance Day, verbal equivalences of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) conduct and that of the Nazis, and unverified graphic testimonies. The sequence closes with Abraham asking whether a genocide has been committed, to which the soldier answers in the affirmative. By that point, the conclusion the film steers towards is difficult to avoid.
What, then, are viewers meant to think? The distinction between “universal lessons” and “simplistic comparison” is teased out, albeit poorly, only in Abraham’s Channel 4 interview, where he disclaims the “simplistic comparison” and then proceeds to draw that parallel anyway. The casual NAZA viewer is unlikely to have seen the interview and is left with only the film’s framing to interpret. That framing (silhouettes that mask identity, testimonies shrouded in anonymity, digitally distorted voices) primes viewers to accept culpability as already established, and with it the genocide libel. In these conditions, how is it possible to re-humanise and mourn Israeli lives and deaths, weaving them into narratives to show that they matter?
CAMERA UK’s capture of the NAZA film’s screening.
CAMERA UK’s capture of NAZA‘s film screening.
Revealingly, in the interview, Szor laments that although Tel Aviv and Gaza are roughly only 60km apart, Israelis have no sense of what is happening in Gaza. Channel 4’s Matt Frei responds that “Zone of Interest comes to mind, obviously.” Szor agrees, adding that the film had some influence, and noting NAZA juxtaposed images of the domesticity of Tel Aviv apartment blocks with the reality on-the-ground in Gaza [14:35-14:58]:
Zone of Interest is a 2023 historical drama, concerned largely with the banal, day-to-day family life of Rudolf Höess, the real-life commandant of Auschwitz. He strives to build a bucolic existence beside the gas chambers he helped create and orchestrate, while the film’s characters callously ignore, or joke about, the atrocities committed metres from their home. If NAZA’s lofty aims were to impart “universal lessons” rather than simplistic equivalences, why does it so frequently invoke Holocaust imagery? If not to liken Israelis to Auschwitz commanders, what purpose does creating an effect of contrast between the routine-based reality of Israeli life and the conditions in Gaza serve? What did the producers take from the Zone of Interest if not a template for recasting Jewish victims as the “new” Nazis and the Palestinians as the “new” Jews, with the Holocaust presented as a moral lesson for, or even a moral indictment of, Jews?
If drawing “universal lessons” from the politics of memory were, as Abraham claims, about “the human rights of everyone,” then why does NAZA pay so little attention to Hamas’ massacre on October 7th? During CAMERA UK’s observation, NAZA neither named the acts committed nor the barbarity of what Hamas did, saying only that Hamas was responsible, thus delimiting the frame through which Israeli victims can be seen. Hamas largely disappeared, subsumed within a narrative already primed to delegitimise Israel’s military response, and any mentions of the terror group’s entrenchment within civilian infrastructure, its expansive tunnel network, use of human shields, and civilian casualty harvesting were conspicuously absent.
At various points during the film’s interviews with unidentified eyewitnesses, sirens halted production and the cast was evacuated off-screen to bomb–shelters. Yet viewers were given no account, real-time or retrospective, of who was launching the attacks on Israel. Hamas thus became an elusive, nebulous force: unseen and unnamed.
2. The Libels
During Channel 4’s interview, Abraham argues that Israel has abandoned the principle of proportionality, and that “mass killing” is not a mistake but rather “baked” into military army policy [23:16-24:06]:
By suggesting that Israel has codified “mass killing” into systematic policy, Abraham disregards the IDF’s well-documented civilian harm mitigation tactics: phone calls, SMS messages, aerial leaflets, the abandonment of strikes where civilians are present, and “roof-knocking,” in which low-yield or non-explosive devices are dropped on a building’s roof to warn civilians of an impending airstrike. Yet neither the film nor the interview mentions these.
Instead, the film cites a figure of 73,000 Palestinians killed without qualification and does not even attribute it to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. As previously noted, Hamas does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. The toll therefore includes combatants, whom the IDF puts at upwards of 25,000. Hamas presents its overall figure without caveat, yet it also includes natural deaths and internal violence between rival factions, including executions.
In the film’s ‘Lavender’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ segments, an unidentified intelligence officer claims that the IDF formalised the non-combatant casualty value (NCV) at 20 civilian deaths per low-level Hamas operative, up from a previous lower range of 6-10. The officer also claims that the IDF estimated that there were roughly 40,000 Hamas operatives at the beginning of the war.
Let us review the numbers:
Although the NCV is a per-strike threshold rather than an average, the film’s own figures sit uneasily with the implication that it was routinely reached.
Even if all 40,000 of Hamas’ estimated operatives had been killed, the film’s own total would leave at most 33,000 civilian deaths (73,000 – 40,000 = 33,000), a fraction of the 240,000 to 800,000 that an NCV of 6-20 applied across them would imply (40,000 x 6 = 240,000; 40,000 x 20 = 800,000).
On the IDF’s figure of 25,000 combatants, an NCV of 20 would imply 500,000 civilian deaths, nearly seven times the film’s total, while even the lower range of 6-10 would imply 150,000-250,000 (25,000 x 6 = 150,000; 25,000 x 10 = 250,000), or roughly two to three and a half times the total.
Viewed thus, the film shifts between the 73,000 Hamas death toll and the stated NCV of 20 as its narrative requires, but set side-by-side, the two numbers do not hold up in its favour. Its position is logically untenable: if the NCV were routinely reached, its own death toll is implausibly low, and if the toll is accurate, the NCV was not routinely reached. It addresses neither possibility.
Channel 4’s interviewer, Matt Frei, does not pose that question and instead stokes tempers by stating [24:10]:
It is the numbers, the NAZA digit, the acceptable number of civilians you can kill for each Hamas operative that moves, you know, in the spirit of revenge and anger. That what is so shocking. One number in this process moves, and the result is thousands of people killed.
Ironically, the language of “proportionality,” the “NAZA digit” and the “spirit of revenge and anger” disregards the basis of the Law of Armed Conflict. Proportionality is not a comparison of casualty figures. Treating it as such would encourage Hamas to continue its policy of using human shields and driving up civilian causalities as far as possible. The test requires a reasonable military commander to weigh the anticipated military advantage of a strike against the expected civilian collateral damage. It is not an effects-based analysis.
For Frei, Abraham and Szor to dictate that Israel’s conduct is disproportionate on the basis on what they see in mainstream news or hear from eyewitness testimonies is legally illiterate. Unless Abraham and Szor have access to the sensitive security intelligence that Israel utilises to make these assessments, neither is in a position to determine whether an individual strike was disproportionate.
Although the film features interviews with “24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers,” none provide access to or proof of such sensitive material. The film rests on 24 anonymous, self-selected interviewees whose accounts the viewer cannot independently verify. Such testimony may establish that certain practices occurred, but not how widespread or authorised they were.
CAMERA UK’s capture of the NAZA film screening.
A claim of “systematic policy” cannot rest on anonymous testimony alone. Without the identities of the interviewees, or verifiable details of the strikes they describe, the viewer has no means of testing whether what they allege was authorised, widespread or merely isolated. The film provides neither, leaving viewers in closed loop: assertion without evidence, resting on testimony they cannot test.
Later in the interview, Abraham claims that two IDF systems, the AI-powered ‘Lavender’ and the automated tracking software ‘Where’s Daddy?’, have enabled the IDF to target Hamas operatives in their private homes [26:12-27:07]:
As far as I understand it, from talking to a lot of sources in the Israeli army, the majority of the bombing, the majority of the civilian slaughter is a consequence of decisions made by the IDF to bomb people when they were inside houses. Those houses are not places where military activity is conducted by Hamas. It is easier to find people. If you think about it, when you go home to sleep at night, you are in your bed, you are in your bed for eight hours. Your children are probably using their phones. They were talking about it freely and openly. It is the ideal place for an army to conduct, it is horrible to say right? Because that means civilian slaughter. And when you use AI, when you use algorithms, when you use computers, you can multiply that location by tens of thousands. There is one point in the film an intelligence officer says there were 40,000 human targets and there are 40,000 houses. For each person, there is a matching house. You can create a system; you can systemise it and these are the results.
Although Abraham concedes that Hamas uses human shields, he maintains that the IDF strikes operatives in their homes rather than during active combat. By citing the estimated 40,000 Hamas operatives, Abraham insinuates that their family members will be struck incidentally, adding to the overall civilian death toll.
However, at risk of stating the obvious, Hamas not only flouts the laws of armed conflict but exploits every aspect of them for military advantage. Israel, by contrast, is bound by international humanitarian law (IHL) and its own standards of conduct, which puts it at a disadvantage against an adversary whose as asymmetric tactics engineer civilian harm.
By using Abraham’s logic, therefore, do Hamas cease to be Hamas when no-one is looking? Are private homes granted perpetual immunity despite their documented dual use as operational command centres or weapons caches? Do Hamas operatives cease to be combatants when they adopt civilian clothing, medical coats, press attire and humanitarian aid markings to conduct hostilities? Did Hamas operatives on October 7th cease to be combatants merely because they were also UNRWA staffers? Do Al-Qassam Brigade operatives receive perpetual immunity despite their IHL-recognised continuous combat function? Why is Israel solely perceived culpable, despite Hamas members endangering their own families?
3. Omitted Truths
As CAMERA UK observed, the film itself credits Motaz Azaiza in its archive footage. Azaiza has recently stated that a Hamas-run WhatsApp channel, ‘SMART,’ coordinated media coverage among Gazan journalists during the Oct.7, 2023 attacks, and that he personally filmed Israeli hostages being beaten by crowds in Gaza but chose not to publish the footage, fearing Israeli reprisal against those filmed.
Even if one concedes that the producers were likely unaware of this, NAZA was filmed across the last three years, during which time Azaiza has routinely praised Hamas’ attacks and sanitised violence against Israelis.
In the film’s concluding segments, it uses unattributed video footage of an unidentified Gazan man purportedly looking for his children following a building collapse (Image below, left). A reverse image search found that Azazia is the original owner of the footage, which likely explains his archive credit. However, the film neither names him in connection with this footage nor displays his watermark. For the casual viewer, his name is almost imperceptible, appearing only in the brief seconds of the end credits (Image below, right).
CAMERA UK’s capture of NAZA’s unattributed video footage vis-à-vis Motaz Azazia’s original footage.
How can such footage feature in a film centred on Palestinian suffering and perceived Israeli culpability when its original owner has an established record of vitriolic anti-Israel bias? Can a film that conceals the provenance of its evidence credibly claim to tell the truth?
Channel 4 was willing not only to platform NAZA‘s producers without question, as they deployed genocide libels on the basis of unsubstantiated claims, but also let its own interviewers equivocate on casualty numbers to determine proportionality, despite this being legally untenable. If it also left unchallenged the film’s platforming of vehemently anti-Israel personalities, and encouraged comparisons between the routine of Israeli life set against the conditions in Gaza and Nazi concentration camp commandants and Auschwitz, then surely its 30-minute segment becomes merely NAZA‘s sequel, a continuation of the same libels?