Israeli army disputes Gaza film NAZA as it tops Italian box office

The Israeli military on Thursday published a detailed rebuttal of NAZA, the documentary on its targeting practices in Gaza, as the film topped Italy’s box office and won an extended run there.

The military denied deliberately targeting civilians and said AI had never picked targets on its own. It acknowledged using AI to help recommend potential targets, but said officers signed off on final strike decisions. It also denied approving, planning or carrying out an attack that anticipated 500 civilian casualties to hit a single Hamas target.

“The film NAZA presents a distorted, misleading, and unrealistic picture of the IDF’s target planning and strike processes,” the statement said. It argued that the 24 who testified had only a partial view of how targets were approved.

A spokesperson for one of the film’s producers said it was false to cast the participants as junior officers involved only in the early stages of targeting. They included officers and soldiers involved in multiple stages, including final authorisation, the spokesperson said, adding that the team had interviewed “more than 100 sources familiar with IDF systems used in the war in Gaza”.

In Italy, NAZA took €451,872 from 60,467 admissions on its Monday opening and nearly €1.81 million from more than 243,000 admissions by the end of Wednesday, figures from box-office tracker Cinetel showed. Over Monday and Tuesday it earned roughly €1.1 million, against €356,000 for a re-release of Avengers: Endgame.

“As long as theatres want to show it, NAZA will continue to be screened,” said Andrea Romeo, founder of the Italian distributor I Wonder Pictures.

Made by Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the 80-minute film draws on the testimony of 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel, kept anonymous and recorded in secret on Tel Aviv rooftops. It won a Special Jury Prize at Venice in September. Culture Minister Miki Zohar has called it “despicable”, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would introduce two bills targeting those who “defame” the military.

The film opened in New York on Wednesday, with a wider US release from October 9, and is due in more than 50 territories this month.