This is Part 2 of a four-part series on contemporary Israel by the author. Read Part 1 here.
One of the few events to have penetrated the atmosphere of quietude in the build-up to to the Israeli election was the controversy surrounding the new documentary NAZA and its reception at the Venice Film Festival. The film, in the unlikely event that any reader has not yet heard of it, was made by two left-wing Israelis—Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor—and exposes, through interviews with Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, how Israel employed sophisticated AI-based targeting systems during the Gaza war, contributing to the massive destruction inflicted on the territory. Its most damning and contentious claim is that the mass killing of Palestinian civilians during the war was not a consequence of military operations, but a deliberate and calculated act.
The film, as might have been expected, was enthusiastically received abroad, while provoking an enormous public backlash at home. It dominated Israeli media discussions for days, remaining in the headlines considerably longer than, say, the foiled terrorist attack on the FlyDubai flight. Much of the public discussion in Israel resembled a kind of moral panic or witch hunt. On several occasions right-wing mobs demonstrated outside the home of one filmmaker's parents, calling for their “treasonous” daughter to be hanged. While these demonstrations appear to have been very small—we are talking about a few dozen activists, not a brownshirt march—this type of harassment is revolting and carries the risk of actual violence.
The film remained in the headlines considerably longer than, say, the foiled terrorist attack on the FlyDubai flight.
Always eager to cater to their voters’ lowest impulses, members of the governing coalition unleashed a series of inflammatory denunciations against the newly designated enemies of the state, illustrating once again how thoroughly the current Netanyahu coalition has degraded basic standards of composure and responsibility once expected of public officeholders. Even the IDF’s chief of staff could not help himself, publicly announcing that he had instructed the military’s legal department to examine possible measures against the film’s “blood libels.” Miki Zohar, the current Minister of Culture and Sports, arguably outdid his colleagues, declaring on social media that he would seek to revoke the filmmakers’ citizenship, while also calling on Israel’s domestic security service, the Shin Bet, to investigate possible connections between the filmmakers and Hamas. These announcements are, of course, a cynical media performance unlikely to produce much in the way of action.
The Figure of the anti-Israel Israeli
But the NAZA frenzy, regrettably, cannot be attributed solely to the populist right. A wave of public outrage swept across much of the Israeli media landscape and extended across nearly the entire political spectrum, except for a few politicians on the far left and the Arab parties. There is little doubt that the film has infuriated most of Israel’s Jewish citizens and touched a particularly sensitive nerve. The scale of this controversy, and its contrast with the lethargic atmosphere described in last week’s article, deserves closer consideration.
One of the interesting aspects of the NAZA controversy is the way in which it is both incredibly familiar—following well-established patterns in domestic and international reception of Israeli cultural production—and yet somehow feels new and exceptional. Much of Israel’s politically motivated creative and intellectual output, particularly its cinema, attracts considerable attention abroad. The world just loves hearing Israelis find ever-new ways of explaining how profoundly wicked their country is, and how extensive its record of horrible crimes.
The world just loves hearing Israelis find ever-new ways of explaining how profoundly wicked their country is.
Israeli artists and intellectuals, for their part, are well aware that the international demand for the figure of the anti-Israel Israeli provides an abundant source of moral, and sometimes material capital (which is not to suggest that they are motivated by cynical career considerations; their conviction in their own righteousness strikes me as entirely genuine).
Thus, every few years, a new film comes out that sheds light on this or that aspect of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, questioning the justification for—or exposing the criminality of—this or that war, or simply portraying Israel as hyper-nationalistic, deranged and vulgar. Many of these films are excellent and manage to illuminate the dark and violent realities of war, military occupation and national conflict. Others seem transparently designed to satisfy the anti-Israel fetish of Western audiences. And all these films invariably provoke the same familiar cycle: international acclaim, followed by inflammatory denunciations by right-wing politicians, followed by an outcry over the erosion of artistic freedom from Israel’s cultural intelligentsia, whose members sometimes seem to believe that fascism is when a state rails against movies that make it look bad.
