Naza

On the rooftops of Tel Aviv, far from the war zone, Israeli soldiers hold secret talks at night. Step by step, it becomes clear how, within the army and the intelligence services, decisions are made as to who is a target, which technologies and procedures are employed in the process, and how many civilian casualties an attack is deemed acceptable to incur. Dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of Palestinian civilians may be regarded as an acceptable price to pay for eliminating a single target. The film thus poses the painful question: how can the killing of innocent civilians become so normalised within a military apparatus that it is no longer seen as a moral or legal problem?

The title refers to Nezek Agavi, ‘collateral damage’, the Israeli military term for the expected number of civilian casualties from an air strike. The term thus symbolises the dehumanisation that is deeply ingrained in the system: civilian deaths are not a tragic side effect, but a foreseen and accepted part of military operations. NAZA premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize.