IDF calls documentary claim of a strike approved with 500 civilian deaths false

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.