The Israel Defense Forces hit back at the anti-Israel documentary “NAZA” with a detailed, 10-page rebuttal Thursday, saying that it “presents a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture of the IDF’s target planning and striking process.”

“The film’s narrative is based on substantial factual errors stemming from manipulative misrepresentations of reality,” the military said.

“Particularly troubling is the film’s further distortion of reality through manipulative editing of interviews, irresponsible allusions to historical atrocities, and its false and baseless attribution of malicious intentions to the IDF,” the military added.

The controversy over “NAZA,” which takes its name from the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” broke out when the film, produced by Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, debuted at the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 10 to great acclaim, garnering nearly 25 minutes of applause and winning an award. By contrast, in Israel, the backlash to the film, which claimed that the IDF uses AI to plan airstrikes that maximize civilian casualties, was intense.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar moved to revoke the Israeli citizenship of producers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The IDF demanded the full release of the film to give the military a fair chance to rebut its claims. And IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir ordered an investigation into possible leaks of classified material used in the film and also declared that legal action against Abraham and Szor was under consideration.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the proposal of two bills aimed at those who defame the IDF: stripping them of their citizenship and increasing the ability to be sued twentyfold.

In its rebuttal, the IDF said that no strike had ever been considered in which the estimated collateral damage reached 500 casualties or anywhere near that number and added that no reports corroborated such a high number of casualties in any strikes. The military said that it complies with international law and makes a clear distinction between military targets and civilians, never intentionally targeting civilians, while acknowledging that during complex operations, errors are made. However, contrary to the film’s claims, the IDF said that it has reviewed hundreds of strikes to assess the collateral damage to continuously improve its military performance.

The IDF denied that it uses AI, including the program known as Lavender, to identify targets.

The Israeli military pointed out that the film excluded interviews with people involved in the “full targeting process — those responsible for planning that mitigates civilian harm, legal advisers who review proposed strikes, and commanders responsible for approving or rejecting them. The result, as noted, is an incorrect and highly misleading portrayal of reality.”

It said that the film omits crucial context: the way in which Hamas embeds itself within civilian infrastructure to maximize civilian harm. The film ignored the IDF’s strategies to mitigate civilian harm with warnings and evacuations and left out the Oct. 7 attack — the reason for the war — altogether.

The military also argued that the film took the word “NAZA,” the Israeli acronym for collateral damage, and inverted it, portraying the act of making a collateral damage assessment as nefarious when in fact that shows compliance with international law. It is against international law to conduct a strike without making such an assessment.

The IDF also criticized the filmmakers for eschewing the appropriate channels for registering a complaint about military wrongdoing.

“Contrary to accepted practice, the filmmakers did not submit their allegations to the IDF for examination and response before publication, nor did they provide a copy of the film after its screening, although the IDF requested it,” the military said. “Therefore, in assessing the film’s contents, the IDF relied on a detailed account from a representative who attended a public screening, as well as other public accounts.”

You can find a summary of the report here and the full 10-page report here.