Por Jonah Raskin
Theatrical release poster – Fair Use
A new documentary about Israel’s on-going endless war of aggression against Gaza, Palestinians —and anyone who dares defy Benjamin Netanyahu and his government—Naza (collateral damage in Hebrew) was written and directed by two award winning investigative journalists, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. It succeeds brilliantly, without special effects, without a star of the stage and screen, or even the faces of the individuals who are interviewed and whose identities are concealed on the screen. Filmmaking has rarely been so secret.
Naza, which might just as well be a show for radio, offers no heroes and no tangible hope for the end of a genocidal war, but it tells a story that has needed to be told and in the words of the men—they all seem to be men— who have unleashed terror against civilians and for the most part have no qualms and no regrets about what they do. It’s all in a day’s work. They take breaks for lunch and a cigarette and go back to work for another round of genocide.
I watched the 77-minute film on a Tuesday evening in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater before a hushed audience that remained seated silently while the credits rolled and then filled outside and spilled onto the sidewalk where viewers engaged in whispered conversations. “Naza rhymes with Gaza,” one moviegoer exclaimed. The word made me think of Nazi. That evening, the film had the effect of instilling silence.
Counterpunch has published articles about the global reception to Naza and the political and social context in which it was written and produced. But it has not published, not until now, a review of a film that almost begs not to be reviewed. After all, it’s bolstered by words and not images, though there are some stunning images of Tel Aviv today and at night with its glass and steel skyscrapers that could be almost anywhere in the world, from LA to Shanghai and Chicago, and that’s only a short distance by car from Gaza.
Google Maps told me “Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions” when I asked nicely. I suppose no one drives from Tel Aviv to Gaza unless they’re part of a military convoy.
The soldiers and intelligence officers who were interviewed for Naza didn’t drive to Gaza, either. They sat at a safe distance away in secret, secure environments, where they consulted phones, AI and the latest technology and gave commands for the obliteration of homes, families, and whole villages. If you worry about AI, Naza will quadruple your worries. Dead bodies piled up in the streets one Israeli techie says. Dogs devoured the corpses while spectators watched in horror and fascination.
One interviewee mentions a Nazis concentration camp which he visited, but he doesn’t see an analogy between the extermination of the Jews, and the extermination of Arabs and Palestinians. Two soldiers say they had “fun” planning the air war that rained down death and destruction and that their job was “entertaining.” They had orders to obey, and obey them they did.
Clearly, they were all indoctrinated or brainwashed, if you will, and came to view Palestinians as vermin and peace as an illusion that would never become a reality in this decade or the next. There is some repetition; the men tell many of the same or very similar stories, but the repetition drives home the messages the two investigative journalists, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, mean to send.
One man’s story might be dismissed as an aberration. But ten men telling more or less the same story, builds a case against the Israeli government, Netanyahu and his gangster associates who spy on the whole world and especially on anyone and everyone who dares to defy them. So say the men who tell the truth in Naza and who say they have no trouble sleeping at night. I won’t have trouble sleeping tonight, though some of the images of Gaza bombed and leveled, the survivors hunting in the rubble for family members might generate nightmares.
But don’t let this review stop you from seeing Naza. It deserves to be watched by everyone who wants to end the slaughter. See it now, before Gaza is only a memory in the mind, and while it’s still a spur to the imagination of poets and writers and a vast graveyard where we all might mourn the loss of our humanity.
Jonah Raskin is the author of Keeping the Beat Alive.
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