IDF issues 10-page rebuttal of Venice prize-winning Gaza documentary NAZA

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel's military, on Thursday published a formal reply to "NAZA", a documentary about its targeting of the Gaza Strip, rejecting the film as a misleading account of how strikes are planned and authorised. The IDF spokesperson's official Telegram channel posted a link to the response, which The Times of Israel described as running to 10 pages.

According to The Times of Israel, the military issued the document after it had finally watched the film, weeks after its premiere. The paper reported that the documentary centres on allegations that Israel deliberately killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza with the help of artificial intelligence, along with a range of other alleged war crimes. In the response, the IDF said the film's narrative rests on "substantial factual errors".

The film and its makers

The Times of Israel identified the documentary's directors as Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, and Rachel Szor. The pair received the Special Jury Prize for "NAZA" at the closing ceremony of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, held on the Lido in Venice, Italy, on September 12, 2026. The Venice festival is one of the longest-running and most closely watched film festivals in the world, and a jury award there brings a documentary wide international attention.

The Hebrew-language reports render the title with Hebrew lettering and the punctuation Hebrew uses for abbreviations. None of the reports explains what the title stands for.

Ynet, the Israeli news site, framed the response as arriving almost a month after a public storm over the film, and described the military's criticism as sharp.

What the IDF says the film gets wrong

The military's central argument concerns the distinction between combatants and civilians. As quoted by The Times of Israel and in the Hebrew text circulated by the Telegram channels of journalist Amit Segal and the commentary account Abu Ali Express, the IDF said its binding orders draw a clear line between militants and uninvolved civilians in Gaza. It said its attack procedures are built on that distinction, forbid aiming strikes at civilians, and require that harm to them be kept as low as possible.

Ynet summarised several further points from the document. According to that report, the IDF said that, contrary to what the film asserts:

• it never approved a strike in which 500 civilians could have been killed;
• artificial intelligence has never chosen strike targets on its own; and
• the military does not disregard the outcomes of its strikes.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the response disputes the film's claims about the ratio of civilian deaths and about the alleged misuse of artificial intelligence in selecting targets. Haaretz, in a report by Yaniv Kubovich, said the military characterised the documentary as a distorted and misleading depiction of the way it selects and approves targets in Gaza.

How the wording differs between reports

The IDF document appears to have been issued in both Hebrew and English, and the reports quote it slightly differently. The Times of Israel's English quotation has the military calling the film "distorted, misleading and disingenuous". The Hebrew version reproduced by Amit Segal and Abu Ali Express uses words that translate as distorted, misleading and unrealistic, and refers to a manipulative misrepresentation. Ynet's headline paraphrases the response as calling the film a distorted and manipulative picture. These variations appear to reflect translation rather than a dispute over substance.

Context for readers

The IDF spokesperson's unit is the military's official public voice, and it commonly distributes statements through Telegram, a messaging app widely used for news in Israel. Several of the reports here are posts on Telegram channels that reproduced the statement directly rather than independent reporting.

The way the IDF identifies and authorises targets in Gaza, and the extent to which automated or AI-assisted tools play a part, has been a subject of international scrutiny. The response engages with the film on exactly those points: the treatment of civilians, the approval of strikes with expected civilian casualties, and whether machines or people make targeting decisions.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports available sets out the film's own evidence in detail, so the specific claims the IDF is answering, including where the figure of 500 civilians comes from, are described only through the military's rebuttal. The reports do not include any reply from Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor or the film's producers to the IDF's document. They do not say why the military took weeks to view the documentary, nor whether the full 10-page response cites specific strikes or data. The meaning of the title is also not given.