Urban warfare expert John Spencer delivered a scathing assessment of the controversial documentary NAZA after watching the film in full, accusing it of spreading falsehoods and distortions about Israel’s conduct in Gaza and singling out its assertion that Israel killed more than 73,000 Palestinians as particularly egregious.

Spencer, who serves as Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and has extensively studied Israel’s military operations in Gaza, said the documentary crosses a line even beyond the claims made by Hamas itself.

“Worse than Hamas propaganda,” Spencer wrote in a post on X after watching the documentary in its entirety. “Over three years, I’ve tried not to be surprised by ignorance, disinformation, and distortions relating to war, but this is at the top for many reasons.”

NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, has become the focus of an escalating international controversy since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last month. The approximately 80-minute film features testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military and intelligence personnel and purports to expose the systems used by Israel to select and strike targets in Gaza.

The documentary was produced by The Guardian together with producer James Wilson, while Jonathan Glazer, the director of The Zone of Interest, served as an executive producer. Abraham and Szor previously worked on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

The film takes its name from what its creators describe as an Israeli military acronym referring to the anticipated number of civilians who could be killed in a strike. Its subjects were filmed largely at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, with their identities concealed and their appearances and voices digitally altered.

NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival after receiving a lengthy standing ovation and has since begun screening internationally, including at the New York Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. A wider theatrical rollout is underway, with the film expected eventually to be made available online.

The film has simultaneously drawn fierce condemnation in Israel. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has described it as being based on “blood libels, deliberate distortions of reality and grave, false accusations against IDF soldiers and commanders”. The IDF has disputed major allegations presented in the documentary and questioned the reliability and level of knowledge of some of its anonymous sources.

The filmmakers have rejected those criticisms, saying their work was based on interviews with more than 100 sources in addition to the 24 people who appear in the film. They have said their reporting included senior officers and personnel involved at different levels of the targeting process and was corroborated through documents and additional reporting.

Spencer said he intends to issue a much more extensive examination of the documentary and its claims. For now, however, he focused on a declaration displayed prominently during the film: “Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza.”

“Not even Hamas says this,” Spencer wrote.

His objection centers on the difference between a reported total number of deaths in Gaza and the claim that every one of those deaths was caused by Israel. Spencer argued that the documentary effectively takes the overall reported death toll and assigns responsibility for all of it to Israeli military action.

Spencer noted that Hamas itself has killed Palestinians in Gaza, including in efforts to suppress opponents and maintain its grip over the territory. Armed confrontations have also erupted between Hamas terrorists and anti-Hamas clans and other Palestinian groups, producing additional Palestinian casualties unrelated to Israeli strikes.

He also pointed to the thousands of rockets launched toward Israel by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that failed to reach their intended targets and instead landed inside Gaza. Spencer said that as many as 20% of the roughly 12,000 rockets fired toward Israel by the terrorist groups fell short inside the Gaza Strip.

Such failed launches have repeatedly endangered Gaza residents, he argued, making it impossible to simply attribute every Palestinian death during the war to Israeli military action.

Spencer additionally challenged the way casualty figures originating with Hamas-controlled authorities have been presented. He said more recent Hamas reporting has included natural deaths among the overall lists of people who died during the war period, another factor that he said undermines any blanket claim that the entire reported toll consists of Palestinians killed by Israel.

“To say every person that died in Gaza was killed by Israel is a vulgar lie,” he charged.

The casualty figure is particularly significant because the film presents itself as an investigative documentary and has received extensive international media attention and major film-industry recognition. Spencer argued that presenting a disputed aggregate death figure as a count of people specifically killed by Israel fundamentally changes its meaning.

The controversy over NAZA extends well beyond its casualty statistics. The documentary alleges that Israeli intelligence and military personnel relied heavily on artificial-intelligence-assisted targeting systems during the war and that permissible civilian-casualty thresholds were loosened dramatically following the October 7 massacre.

Among the film’s most explosive allegations is testimony claiming that a strike against a Hamas target was approved despite an expectation that as many as 500 civilians could be killed. The IDF has strongly rejected that characterization of its targeting procedures and has maintained that its operations are subject to legal review and rules intended to minimize civilian casualties while confronting terrorists embedded within heavily populated areas.

The IDF has also challenged the documentary’s reliance on anonymous witnesses, saying some of those presented as insiders lacked the comprehensive knowledge necessary to make authoritative claims about the military’s targeting policies and approval procedures.

The filmmakers, meanwhile, have defended the anonymity as necessary to protect their sources and insist that the testimony was subjected to extensive verification. They have said the film builds on several years of investigative reporting about Israeli operations in Gaza.

The political reaction in Israel has been equally intense. Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar accused Abraham and Szor of harming Israel and called for authorities to examine whether their Israeli citizenship could be revoked. Other Israeli political figures have denounced the film as a defamatory portrayal of IDF soldiers and commanders.

The film has also encountered protests at American screenings. Demonstrators carrying Israeli flags gathered outside its New York premiere at Lincoln Center, while a vehicle displaying messages accusing NAZA of being propaganda circulated outside the venue. Additional protests surrounded a screening at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Spencer made clear that his criticism goes substantially beyond the disputed 73,000 figure and said he identified numerous other problems while watching the film.

“There are a lot of other lies, lies by omission, and lies of ignorance in NAZA, but this claim is unique,” he wrote, saying that it represents the use of “lies, damned lies, and statistics” to advance accusations that contradict both “the actual number put out by Hamas” and the reality on the ground.

Spencer said he plans to publish a comprehensive analysis detailing his objections to NAZA and its portrayal of the Gaza war.

{Matzav.com}