Chief of staff Eyal Zamir to weigh response to NAZA documentary

Update, 14 September, 12:08 Israel time

The chief of staff due to hold the discussion is Eyal Zamir, and News.co.il reported that he is expected to convene it later the same day, with the question before him being how the military should respond to the claims raised in the film. That is the first indication in the reporting of both the timing and the stated purpose of the discussion.

Haaretz reported the military's denial in the same terms already on the record, describing the allegation as appearing in the Israeli-directed documentary and quoting the army as calling it completely false. Haaretz placed the denial on Sunday and described the film as carrying the allegation that a strike was both planned and approved with that level of anticipated civilian deaths.

None of the new reports say who will take part in the discussion, whether its conclusions will be made public, or whether the military is considering any step beyond its public denial. The filmmakers' response, if any, is still not recorded in the material available.

Update, 14 September, 10:08 Israel time

The IDF chief of staff is to convene a discussion on the documentary, Ynet reported, adding that he had not yet watched the film at the time of publication. Ynet's alert service carried the same line alongside a renewed statement from the military spokesperson's office saying it rejects the allegations entirely.

Ynet also described the interviewees as soldiers said to be serving in Unit 8200, the military's signals intelligence unit, and said the film presents their claims about army policy during the war in Gaza. That characterisation of who appears in the film goes beyond the general description of former soldiers and intelligence officers in the earlier material.

Israel Hayom reported that the military directed its rejection at the film's directors, saying the documentary rests on unverified, anonymous testimony. The reports do not say when the chief of staff's discussion will take place, who will attend, or whether the filmmakers have responded.

The story as first reported

The Israeli military has rejected a claim carried in promotional material for a new documentary that it once approved a strike in the Gaza Strip expected to kill 500 civilians. The Times of Israel reported that a clip promoting the film, made by Israeli filmmakers and titled "NAZA", shows a person described as an Israeli intelligence soldier being asked what the highest number of anticipated civilian deaths ever cleared for a strike in Gaza had been. In the clip, the speaker says he does not know how many people were killed, because that was never checked, but that an approval was once given for 500.

Responding to a post on X that contained the clip, the Israel Defense Forces said the assertion was "completely false". In its statement on X, the military said it had never planned, approved or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians, or a figure close to it, were expected to be killed, and that no credible claim had been raised during the war that any of its strikes had caused a comparable number of deaths. The IDF added that the filmmakers could not have verified the claim and that there was no real supporting evidence for it.

What the film's title means

"NAZA" is a Hebrew acronym. In Israeli military usage it refers to collateral damage, the term for civilian casualties and damage anticipated as a side effect of a strike on a military target. The word appears in Israeli reporting and internal discussion of targeting decisions, and its use as a film title signals the subject matter: the process by which expected harm to civilians is estimated and weighed before an attack is authorised.

The Times of Israel described the documentary as dealing with Israel's use of artificial intelligence in its attacks and with the civilian deaths those attacks have caused. The X post that prompted the military's reply, quoted in the same report, presented the film as testimony from former Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers.

Who the IDF is and how it responds to such claims

The Israel Defense Forces is Israel's military, and its spokesperson's unit issues statements in Hebrew, English and Arabic, increasingly through social media accounts rather than only through press briefings. A direct reply from the official IDF account to a viral post is now a routine mechanism for the military to contest claims circulating online, and it is the form the denial took here.

The IDF's response went beyond the specific number. It also questioned the interviewee himself, referring to his service, in a passage that is cut off in the material available. The military's position, as stated, is that the claim was published despite being unverifiable.

Why the number is the point of dispute

Israeli targeting policy sets a limit on anticipated civilian harm for a given strike, and disputes over what those limits were during the war against Hamas in Gaza have been a recurring subject of reporting and of allegations by former personnel. The figure quoted in the promotional clip, 500, is the specific element the military singled out for denial, saying no strike was ever contemplated at or near that level of expected civilian deaths.

Ynet's alert service carried the military's line in Hebrew in similar terms, reporting the IDF as saying that such a strike was never planned, approved or carried out.

What the reports do not say

The material does not name the filmmakers, the interviewee, or the production company, and does not say when or where the documentary is to be screened in full. It does not say whether the clip is representative of the finished film, nor whether the filmmakers have responded to the military's denial.

Nor do the reports establish what the speaker in the clip meant by an approval: whether he was describing a formal authorisation, a discussion, or a threshold set for a category of targets. No report in this material independently confirms or disproves the claim. What is documented is that the assertion was made in promotional material for the film, and that the IDF publicly rejected it.