Over the past few days I was exposed to all of the testimonies in the documentary "NAZA." The complete testimonies reached me despite an attempt, at this stage, to keep a full copy from people in Israel who are familiar with the process. I went over them several times and compared the serious accusations they contain with the processes I took part in and knew closely.
I'll start from the end - after watching the film, I believe NAZA was not made out of a desire to reach the truth or to understand how the strike-approval system actually worked. Its creators marked out their target in advance: an attempt to prove that Israel built a sophisticated, automated system for the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. Only afterward was the arrow shot, and reality was cut to fit it.
This is the film's method:
I am not claiming that I saw every strike in Gaza, or that every interviewee in the film is lying. It's possible that among the testimonies there are also events that should be investigated. But the film does not settle for the claim that mistakes were made. Its central claim is that this is how the system operated. To that I say clearly: this is a blood libel. That is not how the system worked.
Throughout my years of service, including in this war, I came to know strike-approval processes closely. I took part in discussions about the presence of civilians and hostages. I knew the checks carried out before a strike and the legal consultations involved. I watched dozens upon dozens of strikes change, get postponed, or get called off. Some of these cases and dilemmas were woven into the book "Matir Asurim," which I wrote about the weeks following October 7 at the headquarters for captives and missing persons.
One of the central distortions in the film is a deliberate blending of different stages: intelligence location, target incrimination, an estimate of possible harm to civilians, strike planning, its approval, and its execution. These are different stages, and completely different people are responsible for them. Intelligence officers from Unit 8200 do not approve strikes. They hold part of the picture, and the film uses that partiality as if it were the whole picture.
Incrimination is a station in the process, not authorization to strike. After it, the weapon, timing, method of execution, risk to civilians - and, in this last war, risk to hostages as well - are all examined. In the processes I knew, commanders, population experts, the Air Force, legal advisors and additional parties were all involved. Any one of them could change the plan or halt it.
Another prominent manipulation is the treatment of different numbers and percentages - the collateral-damage ceiling (say, 20 civilians), or occupancy percentages of evacuated buildings (say, 25%) - as if they were the numbers actually approved in practice. Here too, the substantial process that follows the numbers shown in the film changes the picture completely.
Anonymity of interviewees is not a substitute for cross-checking. In this case, the absence of cross-checking is not just a gap in the investigation. It is the mechanism that makes it possible to take fragments of information from a single link in the chain and present them as a verdict on the entire system.
Interviewer: "What's the highest number you remember for a single strike?"
Speaker: "I can't say how many were killed, because they never check that, but there was an authorization for 500, like. For one person."
Interviewer: "What is 500 - like, is that a small town in Israel?"
Speaker: "Yes."
The number 500 is planted at the start of the film as fact, and immediately becomes a symbol of the Israeli method of operation.
What the film omitsAlongside the testimony there is no date, location, target, or strike file. There is no way to connect it to an identified event, and the IDF denied planning, approving, or carrying out a strike in the Strip with such an expected toll. Public data, including data based on the Gaza Health Ministry, does not point to a single strike that came close to 500 fatalities either. A NAZA estimate of this magnitude would have had to reach the highest military echelons. I have not come across a similar event, and the people I spoke with did not know of one either.
When the film presents no event, date, or outcome, the number does not prove how the system operated. It is designed to burn an image of indiscriminate slaughter into the viewer's mind before any checkable evidence has been presented.
Speaker: "I was in meetings with very senior people who were talking, like, about moving the entire population north of Netzarim south of Netzarim with no intention of ever letting them return, or about creating maximum pressure so that everyone would just leave. As if it didn't matter how or why... Say I have this neighborhood here, I divide it into lots and lots and lots of little squares, and it's like they're saying, here a lot of people evacuated, so like, I'll give this 25% of normal occupancy, here a few people evacuated, so that's 50%, here almost no one evacuated, so that's 75%."
Interviewer: "That stayed at, like... yeah. Yeah."
Speaker: "Really the whole Strip is gridded like that. Like, roughly the mapping was - this was green, this was yellow, this was red, and something at 100% is white. So like, say in al-Mawasi you'd have this purple area of even 300% occupancy. Yeah."
Interviewer: "So they're all, like, moving south."
Speaker: "Yeah. That's the direction... after what happened on the Netzarim corridor here. Here. The general assumption was, we're bombing buildings located in areas that 75% of civilians evacuated from - according to the algorithms, there's 25% present there. A building marked green can give you 10-15 minutes… you don't know who that is, you don't confirm afterward what happened, yeah."
The film claims the IDF mapped Gaza in order to expel the population from the combat zones, systematically destroy their homes, and ensure they would have nowhere to return to.
What the film omitsThis is one of the most prominent, ugly - and also easily disproven - manipulations in the film. Facing the claim that the IDF burned homes for pleasure and killed residents inside their own houses stands one of the largest, most complex, and most resource- and life-costly efforts the IDF undertook in the entire war. From the war's very first days, the IDF worked to evacuate the population from combat zones precisely in order to prevent harm to civilians. Thousands of soldiers and officers took part in the effort, millions of messages were sent to residents, and countless strikes and operations were called off because areas had not been evacuated.
A prominent example is al-Mawasi, mentioned in the film as an area that reached 300% occupancy, without the filmmakers bothering to mention why it reached that occupancy level. It is a narrow strip of coastline in southern Gaza that the IDF designated as a shelter zone for evacuees. Tent compounds, field hospitals, water, food and medicine supplies, and defined evacuation routes were all set up there. In what world does an investigative journalist not mention that?
Evacuating the population was a uniquely humane effort in the history of urban warfare, one that demanded enormous resources and was designed to minimize harm to civilians. Trying to turn it into an attempt to harm innocent civilians is a genuine blood libel.
Speaker 1: "I can't say how many were killed, because they never check that, but there was an authorization for 500, like."
Elsewhere in the film:
Speaker 2: "A building marked green can give you 10-15 minutes… you don't know who that is, you don't confirm afterward what happened, yeah."
And later in the film:
Speaker 3: "The officer activated all the company commanders. Like, activated the homes of all the company commanders in the battalion… there's this person, he's NAZA 13. And I hear his kid watching TV and... and what do I do? What do I do with that? Like, this thing is..."
Interviewer: "And that kid is just NAZA 1 out of the 13."
Speaker 3: "Yeah, like they're saying, with the whole family there. They struck their homes at night, in parallel."
Interviewer: "And then that's BDA. Do you understand - were they there? Were they not?"
The film uses phrases like "they never check" and "you don't confirm afterward what happened" to claim that the human outcome simply did not matter to the system.
What the film omitsThe IDF process includes a comprehensive review of every strike. In fact, later in the film itself, BDA is described - Battle Damage Assessment and the later discovery of casualties' identities. In my experience, BDA is a fixed, well-known, central mechanism in the Air Force's work. I am not claiming every strike was always investigated perfectly, but the claim that it was never checked is refuted by the film itself.
The film needs the word "never" to construct a system that is utterly indifferent. Its own quotes prove that the system checked - and checked again.
Interviewer: "How many people, like, live in these buildings?"
Speaker: "If I remember correctly, each one was maybe four floors. Looked like that, more or less. Uh... like four floors, split down the middle into two, with a stairwell and an elevator and an entrance from inside. So that comes out to maybe eight apartments per building. Eight apartments, times five people, times however many buildings. Say around eight, there were more in practice. It already gets to... 320. You understand? Yeah. 320. Even if you say, just give me 25% of that, yeah,"
Interviewer: "You're, like, assuming only 25% of the people stayed there, and that's why it's green."
Speaker: "Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying, that comes out in the end to like 80 dead. Which isn't a small number. 80 is just for one set of eight. There are another 5-10."
Interviewer: "And what did they bomb out of that?"
Speaker: "Everything."
The interviewee uses the colors of the evacuation maps to create the impression that entire buildings, still housing 25% of their residents, were destroyed on top of them.
What the film omitsThis is a harsh manipulation of numbers that leads to a conclusion that simply does not match what happened in reality. The 25% occupancy mentioned in the film is actually a range of 0%-25%. That means even buildings that had emptied out completely were marked green; based on what I saw, and given the efforts the IDF made on the ground, those were the vast majority. The evacuation maps were part of the effort to let the IDF act against weapons depots and militants in built-up areas. Even though the militants did everything they could to prevent the population's evacuation, the IDF worked to move civilians to humanitarian zones: it surveyed the area, announced and sent evacuation notices to the areas where it operated, and methodically investigated the strikes it carried out. I never came across the indiscriminate destruction of towers on top of their residents.
The claim that 25% occupancy was the threshold for striking a building on top of its residents does not match the conduct I witnessed in reality.
Interviewee: "(The system) gives recommendations for targets."
…
Interviewee: "Lavender, at 85% accuracy, flags whether a phone number belongs to a Hamas operative or not. Meaning at least 15% are not Hamas operatives."
And later:
Interviewee: "Who did the killing was whoever activated the bombs, and who did the incrimination was an investigator who decided on it, and who set the fire policy was the fire officer."
The word "recommendations" is wrapped in imagery of technology spiraling out of control, until the viewer is left with the feeling that the machine decided who to kill.
What the film omitsLavender was described in the IDF's response as a supporting database that must not be relied upon by itself. It is a system that is part of a process in which additional factors enable incrimination. So even 85% accuracy for a supporting tool does not mean 15% of innocent people were struck. The interviewees themselves describe human beings at every link: an investigator who incriminated, an officer who set fire policy, and another who controlled the munitions. In the processes I knew, technology helped people locate information and check it. It did not decide who dies, and it did not replace the chain of approvals. Even after incrimination, there remained strike planning, checking for civilians and hostages, matching the munition, the approval chain, and more.
The claim that the machine chose targets and decided is not "ambiguity." It is a contradiction at the heart of the film's thesis, one that plays on viewers' fear of a futuristic, all-powerful machine killing without distinction. The film erases the stages between a technological recommendation and a strike, turning a database and an orderly cross-referencing process into a killing machine.
Interviewee: "Anyone registered in Lavender was permitted to be bombed with a NAZA of 20."
Interviewer: "But when you're authorizing the killing of 20 people for every junior operative... then you end up covering the whole of Gaza."
Speaker: "Right. I honestly didn't quite know what to do with that understanding either. Like, right, yes, and in practice, because of that, at a certain point I really couldn't watch anymore. I couldn't stay there, and I can't take part in that."
And later in the film:
Interviewee: "Even if you call it NAZA - it's intentional killing. He was there, you intended to kill him."
Interviewer: "Do you think today that this is genocide?"
Interviewee: "Yes. Really."
The interviewer performs the manipulation on camera - NAZA 20 becomes an "authorization to kill 20 people." Then the mere knowledge of risk to civilians becomes "intentional killing," and from there the path to the conclusion "genocide" continues with a single question.
What the film omitsNAZA is a risk estimate and a ceiling for discussion, not a target and not an outcome. In the discussions I knew, the surrounding population, civilian evacuation, concern for hostages, the munition, and the timing were all examined. Strikes were changed or called off many times, even when they fell below the set threshold. Legally, too, the existence of a collateral-damage estimate does not prove the specific intent required for the crime of genocide.
The film does not expose a fact here. It plants the conclusion inside the question, gets a "yes" from the interviewee, and presents the logical leap as evidence.
Speaker: "So we find them at their homes, or at the homes of family, or a mistress, whatever. Wherever the father is - that's really a mechanism for when he, when some operative arrived home. We manage to connect to the family as the target's name."
Interviewer: "And you know when he got home?"
Speaker: "We hack into the phone of a 12-year-old girl. Say the girl calls her mother, 'Yamma,' she'll call her, 'has Daddy come back, has Daddy arrived' - that will be the confirmation that triggers the mechanism. There's the root [word for 'returned'] here. Ah, Daddy, Daddy."
A description of intelligence-gathering and locating a person at home is presented as a mechanism that immediately triggers a strike on the house and the family.
What the film omitsThe quote describes how an indication was received that the person had arrived home. It does not describe his status as a target, who else was in the house, whether civilians or hostages were present, what munition was considered, who approved a strike, whether it was carried out, or what the outcome was. The film stops at exactly the point where the operational process begins. In the processes I knew, information about a location went through a long series of checks, and in many cases ended with the strike being called off.
The film turns an intelligence trigger into a fire trigger. The system's name does the cinematic work in place of the evidence that was left out and the story that was never proven.
Interviewee: "The claim about human shields and houses is ridiculous, it's simply not true. We bomb them in houses because that's how we find them."
The interviewee presents two options as though they contradict each other: either we located operatives in their homes, or Hamas operated out of civilian space and used it to protect its people.
What the film omitsAnyone who was in Gaza, or who knows the combat environment there, knows: militants, weapons, and hostages were indeed found in residential buildings and civilian facilities, including hospitals, schools and mosques. That is Hamas's doctrine of warfare. The fact that Hamas operated out of a civilian population does not erase the IDF's duty to minimize harm. It explains how constant friction was created between Hamas operatives and civilians, why the vetting process was difficult, and why so many resources were invested in it.
To present the presence of civilians as an Israeli choice, the film must systematically erase the way Hamas chose to fight. So the reality well known from the war is declared "ridiculous" in the film, and disappears.
Interviewer: "And there wasn't anyone around you who... objected to it?"
Interviewee: "Not a single person."
Elsewhere in the film:
Interviewee: "This thing really did produce a lot of mistakes... and it troubled the intelligence community professionally."
The phrase "not a single person" is used by the film to paint a uniform, obedient system with no doubts.
What the film omitsThe target-approval process involved different parties with almost opposing interests, and many after-action reviews - even the film itself says that when there were mistakes, they troubled the intelligence community professionally. In my experience too, there were countless disputes around strike approvals, some of which ended in a change, a rejection, or a cancellation. The significant arguments also took place outside the field of view of Unit 8200 personnel - among strike planners, population experts, legal advisors, the Air Force, and the headquarters for captives and missing persons.
It's possible the interviewee didn't hear objections within his own team. From there to the sweeping determination that in the entire system "not a single person" objected is an enormous distance. The film erases that distance because, cinematically, it needs an army with no argument, no checks and balances, and no people who say "no."
Interviewee: "NAZA. The strikes I remember, 200. A senior figure - we don't actually know where he's staying. And every place we think he might pass through in his day-to-day, we'll bomb. And that's over large radii. Let's say, from here to that building there, we attack everything. An entire neighborhood."
Elsewhere:
Interviewee: "The basic unit is a house. The IDF evacuates by houses, like there's a number, just a serial number for every house. A house per person? Yes."
Interviewer: "Is that per floor or per building?"
Interviewee: "Per building. Per building. Yes, and then if they specify a floor, they pinpoint the structure - 6351, floor 7."
The phrase "an entire neighborhood" is presented as a factual description of a method of operation, even though there is no location, date, target, list of buildings, or outcome attached to it.
What the film omitsElsewhere, the film itself describes the ability to drill down to the level of a specific building and floor. That doesn't prove every strike was precise, but it does illustrate that the system worked with defined targets and structures. In the processes I took part in, concern about harming hostages whose location was unknown greatly restricted broad strikes. The discussion concerned a specific target, a specific time, and a specific method of action.
This claim does not square with the operational reality I know. Without a location, a date, or further detail, the phrase "an entire neighborhood" does all the work. The film uses an image that cannot be examined and presents it as proof of a method.
Interviewee: "I remember the pressure, and I remember, like, the phone, like, a lot of sources like that - first we cross-checked with the Air Force, and I don't remember who else, like, everyone's like, '8200, is there approval? 8200, are you authorizing?' We're like, and like, we were blinded there in the software and under pressure, and like, we couldn't find it, like, we simply couldn't find the GPS fix we needed to find, and it took time, and it was already 8:06 or something like that, until... like, and they were really like, time passing, they'd set 8am, so it has to be by 8am, and then when we found it, they're like, 'yes, yes, there's approval,' and there really was a strike, and the next day it really turned out that he and his entire family were killed in his own house."
The quote is constructed so that the word "approval" sounds as if Unit 8200 personnel decided to strike the person and his family.
What the film omitsThe film's creators build on the average viewer's unfamiliarity with the strike-approval process. The testimony itself describes a search for a GPS fix and confirmation that the person was in that location. That is an intelligence role - not a decision about the target's status, and certainly not the final strike authorization. Whoever is responsible for the location fix does not necessarily hold the incrimination file, the operational considerations, the check for civilians, or the decisions of the approving echelons. Even according to the quote itself, the Air Force and additional sources were specifically involved in this process.
Contrary to how the process actually works, the film takes an approval of a location and sells it to the viewer as an approval to kill. That is exactly the conflation on which the entire thesis is built.
NAZA's central claim is not that mistakes were made in the war, or that there were difficult incidents. It claims that this was the method - an automated system that turned civilians into numbers and let technology decide who lives and who dies. To build that claim, the film turns an estimate into an outcome, a location into an authorization, a database into a kill list, and the testimony of a single link into a description of the entire system.
This is not a random series of mistakes. It is a consistent editorial choice. Wherever the full process might complicate the story, it disappears. Wherever an anonymous sentence can shock, it stays. When the quotes contradict each other, the film does not stop. It moves on to the next scene and leaves the feeling of having done what the evidence itself fails to do.
I was in the rooms where these discussions took place. I saw strikes changed, postponed, and called off because of civilians and because of hostages. The film is entitled to criticize the decisions, but it cannot claim to have exposed the system after erasing almost everyone who operated it, checked it, restricted it, and at times stopped it.
Even if there are difficult events among the testimonies, the film does not use them to understand what happened. It uses them as raw material for a conclusion written in advance. The creators of NAZA did not discover how the strike system actually worked, and I suspect that did not particularly interest them. Instead, they chose how to describe the system and cut reality wherever it didn't fit the story.
This is not an investigation that ended in a conclusion. It is a blood libel built in the format of an investigation.
An example of the process described above - diverting fire in real time, meaning a decision to halt or redirect a strike before it is carried out:
Miron addressed similar claims in a personal interview with Ayala Hasson, where he was asked directly about the film and about strike-approval processes: