NAZA: the film the Israeli government does not want you to see

This is The Guardian. Hi, Regid Ahmed here coming to you from Gadigal land. Today we're bringing you an episode from The Guardian's International News Podcast today in focus where host Annie Kelly is in conversation with the directors of NASA. The award-winning Guardian produced documentary about Israel's systemic mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Just before we start, there are some distressing scenes in this episode, including moments where we describe the killing of children. But I would urge you to listen if you can. Throughout the war in Gaza, the Israeli military always told its people and the world one thing. Israel does not target Palestinian civilians. We target Hamas terrorists. It does not deliberately kill civilians. We want to differentiate between our enemy, which is these Hamas extremists, and between Gaza civilian population who are not the targets of our offensive. But in a new documentary from Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zaw, Israeli military insiders set out the vast AI systems used to rain down airstrikes on Gaza that have directly led to the mass slaughter of civilians. OK, Lom Shanaem Ma'Nachel Naseh, they deserve it. The film takes its name from the code word used to count the number of civilians expected to die when authorizing a strike against a suspected Hamas target. Yeah, Gaza is a military acronym that intelligence officers use to refer to the number of civilians, Palestinian civilians, that they expect will be killed in an air strike. It stands for two Hebrew words, "Naseh Kagavi." "Naseh Kagavi." "Kamutai Naseem Shulchim Lamut Pa Matkifa." "Naza one. Naza 20. Naza 500." "Naza doesn't distinguish between women and men, adults and children, militants and civilians." "So a baby can be one Naza?" Yeah, there's no, in the Naza, this is one of the sources that I ask them that. And it's a question I've asked many soldiers. The Naza number doesn't differentiate. I mean, 20 Naza can mean 20 children. Sometimes people talk about it and it almost felt like, you know, 15 Naza, 20 Naza, 40 Naza, like you're in the market and you want to buy a sandwich. And it's like, is it 15? Is it 20? It's a notion that there's like a greater authority that, you know, legitimizes being a quagg in a much larger system. The film, which was produced by the Guardian, and is in cinemas in the UK and across the world today, is based on testimony from over a hundred sources. And features secret interviews with 24 military whistleblowers, filmed on rooftops across Tel Aviv. This film is probably is another way of propaganda against Israel, against the IDF. And it has already provoked rage and an extraordinary political backlash inside Israel. You take away the context, you refuse to investigate the facts, and then you tell the world the story that much of it is already prepared to be. That is what Naza does. Yvale and Rachel have been branded traitors, threatened to have their citizenship stripped, and Netanyahu has pledged to hunt down and expose their sources. From the Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly, today in focus, Yvale Abraham and Rachel Zaw on Naza. The film Israel doesn't want you to see. Rachel Zaw and Yvale Abraham, your filmmakers and the co-directors of Naza. And it's a film that has built on years of reporting into the Israeli military's AI-assisted targeted killing of civilians in Gaza, reporting that is done by yourselves and other journalists, including Harry Davis from the Guardian. Rachel, I'd like to start the interview by asking that when you set out making this film, what was the story that you wanted to tell, and who did you most want to see it? Yeah, I mean, so we have been working on the film for the past two and a half years, three years. Yvale was working on these investigations. I think we understood that there is this opportunity to get those soldiers to also speak in front of the camera. And I mean, I think that was the first thing that we wanted to do. We saw this opportunity to get it on record, and we felt that there's a meaning to it. Sometimes that brings another value than written journalism. I think we have seen in the last three years a lot of denial of what Israel is doing. I mean, there's justification from a lot of the public, but also there is this part of the society who are either not acknowledging it or denying it, or finding different excuses. This sort of collective disbelief in a way in what they're being told. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, the soldiers who were speaking in the film are actually soldiers who are coming from, they say in the film, from the elite part of the Israeli society. I mean, a lot of them describe themselves as leftists, as they relate to this part of the Israeli society. They're not big supporters of the BB government. And our first idea was to, it was really stupid, but we wanted to film it in public. Like, we had this idea of going to the Main Street in Tel Aviv, Rochelle Street, and we imagined you were sitting on a bench with the interviewist and hearing those testimonies and descriptions of the systems that you're using in the public. Of course, we can do it because they're anonymous. But I think the idea was to do it in a place that kind of meets the public space because we felt that so much of these systems are being kept in the dark. No one is either not aware of it or not speaking of it, so we wanted to create this, I don't know, meeting point. And somehow we reached the idea of the rooftops also in Tel Aviv. The interviews themselves that you conduct on those rooftops are, I mean, clinical, detailed, deeply, deeply upsetting. I saw the film this weekend. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. It describes in detail how an AI system called Lavender was used to survey and target people inside Gaza through mass surveillance through mobile phone networks. And then that targeting led to strikes on Gaza by the Israeli military. We did cover this on an episode of today in focus a few years ago. But Yvonne, what did your sources tell you about how this system directly led to mass civilian deaths inside Gaza? Yeah, one of the things that happened after October the 7th is that the Israeli army was constantly looking for ways to create more targets. In previous operations in Gaza in 2021 and also in 2014, soldiers said that the targets just ran out. And one of the reasons why Israeli officers and soldiers say they relied on AI on artificial intelligence was to make sure that this stream of targets, one source calls it a factory of targets, is constant and that the bombing is constant. In early November, already the Israeli military spoke about if I'm not mistaken, I think it was 12,000 targets that were bombed in the Gaza Strip. And what our reporting has shown and soldiers described in the film is one of those systems called Lavender, which as you were saying, it's an AI based system that gave almost every individual in Gaza who has a phone with them rating between 1 to 100, which indicates how likely it is the system believes that this individual's patterns of behavior, the way they use their phone is similar to the way a Hamas member would use their phone. So it's built on a model of how they expect a Hamas member to be used in a barfine? Yeah, exactly. So the way these AI models work is that you give them data to train on. So the Israeli military basically creates a list of people that they say are Hamas members for sure, according to them, and the system analyzes the way their phone behaves and patterns of behavior. So it could be things that are like your contact list on your phone. So you can imagine if you're in Hamas, maybe you have a lot of people on your phone that are saved with the name Hamas or in the organization. It could be someone that constantly changes their phones or someone that their phone is located near Hamas training compound. The crucial thing with Lavender is, I think there are two things to think about here. The first is that, as soldiers are saying in the film, the Army knew that there was obviously an error rate. This was a statistical mechanism. They give an example of someone who could be a baker, for example. He has a bakery and it's near a Hamas training compound. So their phone patterns could be similar to Hamas militants, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that person is in Hamas. And it had an error rate and that depended on the threshold, that depended on how many targets the Israeli Army wanted. So if you're willing to accept more civilian casualties, you can set the threshold of errors to be lower or higher. I think that's one thing to think about and the other is just the scale. Because these are people who are not killed in surgical targeted strikes when they were in combat. The people marked by lavender, the people who were on Israel's kill lists in Hamas or suspected to be in Hamas were targeted inside their homes. They were targeted alongside their entire families, alongside everybody in the building. And so when you use AI to generate thousands of targets like this, hundreds and thousands of such human targets, then the results are our total destruction of entire families. And you mentioned this margin of error that was almost built into this system. What was that margin of error? How much did they expect to get wrong? So it was between, sometimes it was 10%, other times it was 15%, again it changed throughout the war. You said that there were thousands of potential targets, so that's a huge margin of error then. It is, there were thousands of people who were on lavender according to sources, who were not part of the Hamas military wings and were marked statistically, they knew that was the case. I further this again and again, there was, one soldier said there was a statistical approach to mistakes. Meaning we know that one out of 10 strikes is going to be a striking and someone that is not in Hamas. But we're willing to accept that because they said humans make mistakes too. The Israeli army said in response that there are always humans in the loop, that the AI-based system does not make the decisions from start to finish entirely on its own. And we're not claiming otherwise that is true, but one has to ask themselves where that human is in the loop. And what we've seen with lavender is that the decision to incriminate someone, the decision to say this individual is a junior militant in Hamas. That's a decision that has been done by the lavender system. There are further decisions that humans are involved in, for example, the decision of where to bomb that person, for example, the calculation of how many civilians are going to die with that person. So there are humans in the loop, but this crucial part of the so-called loop relied heavily on AI in certain units in these Israeli armies. So the system is effectively deciding who lives and he dies? Yeah, I mean, that's how the sources put it. That has been the case, especially in the units in the Israeli army that dealt with the junior ranking Hamas members. So of course there were people who were focused on the senior members of Hamas, for example. That's a situation where they did not rely on lavender because they knew who these people were and the challenge was trying to locate them. Often they were inside tunnels. How do you pinpoint their location? For people targeting the more junior militants, these are people that the Israeli army after October 7th didn't know who they were. They didn't have a mapping out of the entire Hamas military wing. So relying on AI was seen as a necessity. Without creating these mechanisms, we just won't be able to know who these people are. Yeah, exactly. And also I guess when you've baked in a 15% error rate, it allows you then to spread that much wider. You talked about how the Israeli military had effectively at one point run out of targets. So it's spreading the net as widely as possible using this AI target. I mean, if you think about it, there's a moment in the film where one of the soldiers who took part in this says that talks about how at a certain point, they realized that there were tens of thousands of such targets of suspected Hamas militants. And he says that the benchmark was there was like a general authorization of bombing these people in their homes with up to up to 20 civilians. And this is actually happening in front of the camera. He makes the calculation in his head. And he says if it's tens of thousands of people and were allowed to kill up to 20 per person and he does the kind of multiplication in his head, the result is the destruction of people can calculate how many people the limiting factor is the amount of bombs that are there. I mean, the Israeli army had a specific amount of bombs. So it was called like the bomb economy. They had to ration out how they're using the bombs. But such a situation ensures that the army won't run out of targets. And they can use all the bombs they are receiving. And this is unfortunately one of the things that have happened. And going back to the kind of the NASA number, can you describe what kind of figures we're talking about? Was it that the more senior the target, the higher the NASA was deemed to be acceptable for the number of civilians that would die as a consequence of that strike? Well, generally that was the case. We spoke about up to 20 for junior targets. And we know of multiple cases where the target was more senior and the NASA numbers were in the hundreds. I think it was up to 500, which is an astonishing number. It is the highest number that I've heard that particular strike had an authorization of 500 NASA. It's very striking to compare this to what has been the norm in the Israeli military in the past. Because obviously there have been human rights organizations have described Israeli actions in Gaza as war crimes in the past as well. And these policies of bombing people inside their homes existed also in the past. But if you look back, if you go back to say 2002, Israel bombed the highest ranking member of the Hamas military wing. Salach Shadeh was his name. He was the head of the military wing in his house in July of 2002, killing 14 civilians, 11 of them children. And it caused a huge uproar in Israeli society. And in the opposition at the time spoke about it as state terrorism. There were pilots who signed the letter saying they will refuse to bomb Gaza in this way. People were shocked that the army can know that there are children in the house and they can still bomb the house. And this was 14 people, 14 NASA, so-called NASA, right? And today, this number, 14 NASA, the soldiers are saying we would bomb 14 NASA or up to 20 NASA for not for the senior ranking member of Hamas, but for any member in the organization. And even if we're not even 100% sure that this person is at home or we're 100% sure that this person is even at Hamas because he was marked with an AI-based program like Lavender. So you can see how these notions of NASA and collateral damage have been so stretched. I don't know what's the words we use here, but so they lost all meaning and became a tool that facilitates and normalizes mass killing. There was another moment in the film where you talked about how NASA also doesn't distinguish between children and adults, men and women, civilians, non-civilians. So a baby can be one NASA. Yeah, there is no-in the NASA, this is one of the sources that I ask them that. The NASA number doesn't differentiate. I mean, 20 NASA can mean 20 children. It can mean one NASA is one civilian who's not the target. And we've seen, I mean, air wars, an organization that monitors air strikes and has done a lot of work on Gaza has documented extensively the first month of the bombing. And it shows that on average, strikes that they've found Hamas militant was killed on average had 20 civilian alongside that militant. So it's, to me, hearing, again, this number 20 reappear also in this statistical analysis of, I think, more than 600 air strikes in Gaza that air wars have conducted over the first month. It really matches and connects to what the soldiers have been saying. And as you talked about, one of the most distressing parts of the film is when you talk about this system called Where's Daddy. You've mentioned the policy, the strategy of targeting people in their own homes as they are sleeping or living alongside family members. The targeting system that has since also been reported by outlets such as Herets. Rachel, could you explain to us what is Where's Daddy and what did your sources tell you about it? Yeah, so I mean, it's actually based on this way of connecting to the phone of family members, not just of the targets, but actually there's a way to connect to the phones of the son's daughters. In that way, there's an algorithm that creates this alert when there's a use of words such as Daddy coming back home. This is listening to children's phones, to teenagers' phones talking about their parents. Yeah, so one of the soldiers is actually describing that he can listen to or read messages of a 12-year-old girl talking with her mom saying that her dad just came back home. And that's the time that they're choosing to bomb. Rachel, when you talked about the IDF sources who were talking to you about hacking into the phones of a 12-year-old girl listening to where she might be telling her mom when her dad is coming home, just to be clear, those family members are then dying alongside their father, their husband, their son when he comes home. Yeah, I mean, it connects to this term, NASA, the collateral damage as the soldiers are describing, but yeah, I mean, this is part of the. They're all NASA, yeah. When you have a system making certain decisions or when you just have laws and rules like these NASA authorizations where you have a number, especially a numerical number, that you can look at the house and say, "Okay, is it under 20 or is it over 20?" If it's under 20, if it's 17, then it's legal. There's an authority that decided that it's okay. And if it's over 20, then it's not okay. Sometimes people tell you that you're not a good person. talked about it and it almost felt like, you know, 15 as a 20 as a 40 as a like you're talking about how much you, you know, like you're in the market and you want to buy by by by a sandwich and it's like is it 15 is it 20 and there's like a greater authority that, you know, legitimizes being a cog in a much larger system. I was really surprised by how much that that thinking that you know, you have to trust the system and it really repeated itself in in many of the interviews. You know, it struck me watching it how how hard it must have been for you to sit on their rooftops both of you and listen to those testimonies of people explaining how they participated in a genocide remotely in such a systematic kind of clinical way. What out of all the things you heard on those rooftops were the things that hit home or affected you the most? As we were making the film, I mean, it was shocking, it was hard, but we also felt that in a way as Israel is that we have this, you know, responsibility. I mean, it felt also like we have this access now to these sources and I think that was what led us the most. I mean, to try to do whatever we can as fast as we can because these things are still going on and to bring it to take, to make this film as fast as possible. Still, of course, things were shocking, were shocking, even though, of course, anyone that's open social media today can see what is happening in Gaza. Palestinian journalists have been documenting and showing what is happening in the last years, but I think still it's weird to sit there with people who come from the same background as us. And you know, there's also like this image of sometimes of these killings from far who are happening behind the screen without really knowing what is happening and there is this we were talking before about the phones. There is this segment in the film that they're actually describing how they can open the phone and as we said, here what is happening in the house before and also after the moment, the one is describing hearing the family hearing TV or a baby crying. And I think for me it was pretty shocking to understand how much knowledge they have, how much they can actually hear before and after the bombing. I think for me what was the most difficult or disturbing to hear. I knew about the targeting systems because I've written quite a lot about it before and so I wasn't so I mean, it was shocking when I first heard about it for the reporting that I've done before plus 972 magazine and and then also together with the Guardian. But there was a point in the film where the soldiers just stop talking about targets where where they just say, you know, at a certain point, anyone who crossed an imaginary line doesn't matter if they're like a man, woman or a child would be killed, would be murdered. And this to me speaking with soldiers and officers who had an understanding about that process was was was extremely disturbing, especially especially the discussions, you know, sources in the film who speak about the food sites in Gaza. How they said every morning there would be three teams of soldiers and who would massacre the Palestinians coming to the food site. Speaking about how there would be a line of Palestinians rushing towards food. This is happening in in a situation where these people have been starved like as an official, you know, policy in a tunnel talks about it on Israeli TV, the Israeli army between March to May did not let any food into Gaza. There was widespread hunger. People are hungry, people running towards food. And there were people, you know, trying instead of running in the line, they were running through a valley going downhill. And snipers were sitting far away. No soldiers in danger would just shoot this people to kill. And soldiers speak about, you know, how some days six people would be shot like this other days, 15 people would be shot like this. You know, one of those agonizing things about the film was that escalation, but also the scale of the death that was kind of being rained down on Gaza and the skies. The way that your sources talked about not only their own compliance with that system, but the way that even the sense of purpose, even fun that they had while participating in that machinery of war. Yeah. Did like, how did you make try and make sense of that mindset? Did it make any sense to you that how those people that are speaking to on those rooftops could have got to that point? You have an answer? It's the hardest question, I think, really, it's very difficult. And it's one of the things that we tried to understand in in the conversations and in the interviews. It speaks to the level of demonization that exists that, you know, it was amplified obviously after the October 7th massacre. There was understandable, of course, trauma and grief in the Israeli society and anger that was very quickly weaponized, I think, by politicians, by military leaders, in a sense that it kind of became a widespread notion that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza and that everything, you know, that is done in Gaza. They deserve it and we shouldn't care about it. And these are things that have influenced army policy. I think that the demonization runs deeper than that in a sense. I think some of it probably relates to the fact that Palestinians have been living on the Israeli occupation and control for decades. And I mean, critics of that have said have warned already in the past that such a system where millions of people don't have rights and are under the control of another group of people will inevitably lead to total demonization. And I think that definitely plays a significant role. And the international community also played a significant role. I think, you know, the especially the United States, but not only also other countries in Europe could have stepped on the brakes and could have withheld weapons and taken diplomatic action to tell Israel, look, what you're doing cannot continue. It's clearly against international law. And it didn't it didn't happen in the Biden administration. And then it didn't happen, of course, under the Trump administration. So one person in the film talks about destroying the neighborhood in Gaza and cities. And he says that the sense was, you know, we have international legitimacy now to do this. Let's get it done before this international legitimacy runs out. That was a rush to get the job done. There was a rush, but in retrospect, I mean, maybe they didn't need to rush because the international legitimacy stayed for so long. And things are shifting slightly now, but there still is international legitimacy to a large degree. And evidently, 1,400 Palestinians more than 1,400 were killed since the October 2025 ceasefire in Gaza. And, and you know, most of them have been civilians. So, so clearly, you know, there are no breaks. No, no stopping this. No. And that's part of the reason why it is it can continue for so long. And as someone I care, you know, the reason why we made this film first and foremost is to end these crimes against Palestinians. We also made it as Israelis because we believe in a just future for both people for Palestinians and Israelis, where the human rights of everybody is respected. I thought you also made a very strong point as well about the kind of collective denial of the residents of the city, where this was happening as well. It's such a visually arresting documentary. You're filming on the rooftops at night and and you're intercutting those interviews with scenes of the city, which is almost like mirroring the mass surveillance that the gardens are being put under, while just 60 kilometers away, Palestinians are being killed in their home, a whole population being made homeless. Yeah, I mean, Tel Aviv is kind of another character in the film. And I think it was for various reasons. The first of them is also the fact that the main Israeli military headquarters actually in the heart of that city and a lot of the operations and attacks that are being described in the film are actually happening from there. And as you were saying, Gaza is only 60 kilometers from there. But as you walk in the city, you, as you were saying, you see bars, you see people living their lives as, you know, as a city should be, of course. But there is this sort of tension of of of the silence of what is happening and what you can't actually see. And we made this decision of of surveilling kind of or looking into people's apartment. I think the first reason why we've done it was actually to just show also how this our society is is living the life as usual in a way. I mean, of course, you can see also in the film, there's demonstrations to return to hostages. There's a sirens from from missiles. The city is still experiencing the war, but it's denying and ignoring something so big that is happening that we are caring. I think generally living in Israel and knowing what's happening in Gaza, you generally have this this notion and sometimes you want to scream, you want people to at least talk about it, to at least, I don't know, to give it some some place. and I think especially in Tel Aviv, which is a city that maybe a big percent of the population in the city won't be the people that will say that there's no innocent people in Gaza and they will have many excuses for what we're doing. Either they will not talk about it or they will use these, I don't know, trying to say that they're hiding behind civilians, Hamas, that we're using human shields that we are not targeting. You hear actually BB saying in one of the speeches in the TV that Israel is not targeting civilians, but I think when you match it with what the soldiers themselves are saying, the systems they're describing, then I don't know, there's a clash. - The killing of civilians is not a mistake. I mean, it's a calculated element of the bombing, it's premeditated, it's in some cases intentional. And it's not only, I mean, as Rachel was saying, it reflects, I believe in Israeli decision, it reflects this notion that we speak about a lot, we spoke a lot here that this notion of dehumanization, that Palestinian life has very little to no value. And that was there, and that was there in the rooms where this bombing policy was designed. It's a big question, the complicity of not only the military, but also people who are living in a society in our remaining silence despite crimes taking place next door. And I think I'm always cautious about assigning blame to an entire society, 'cause it's not true. And also there is still a very big difference between being the soldier in an army that is committing the crime and being a citizen of a country that is oblivious to it or justifying it in terms of responsibility. But I do think that, yes, I mean, there is a criticism here that we are directing towards, again, towards people that we, the reason why we are doing it is because we believe in the ability of societies to change. And we look at the people who live in Tel Aviv who describe themselves as the liberal Israelis who are part of the anti-Natiniau camp or on the so-called center left, they speak about their secular people, they believe in things that many people, progressive forces in the world may believe in on the one hand and on the other hand, justifying a law for the killing of 20,000 children in Gaza has participated in such killing. And you mentioned we should stop to acknowledge the fact that hundreds of Palestinian journalists died. This is the one in the process of trying to tell the same story. Do you think that it took Israeli filmmakers and Israeli military insiders telling this story to receive this kind of international attention, but also the domestic attention that this film has received? I mean, if you look internationally, I think the work that Palestinian journalists have done still had a meaning. I mean, you see a shift also in the public opinion and it's all only thanks to the really courageous work that Palestinian journalists have been doing. I mean, people in the world are aware. There's still no changes in the government's policy. It's still not enough, but I mean, all of this has happened because of their work. I think about Israel and I know that, yeah, I think it's also part of the demonization, it's part of the racism inside the society that if it's coming from Israelis, then yeah, it has more meaning. I think part of the reason why it also got so much attention in Israel, it's because in a way, people see us as traders. - Coming up, you vow and Rachel on the extraordinary political backlash against their film. (gentle music) - You know, as you're talking about, the film has received huge critical acclaim, huge already box office success, standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, even before many people had seen Nazar, the backlash though was terrible and extraordinary. As you said, you've been accused of treason, there have been threats against you, Rachel, your family has been targeted by protesters, the Israeli government claim it could strip you of your citizenship. There's also been this strange propaganda document called Nazar, the real story that attempts to undermine and flip the narrative and the claims in your film. Firstly, I just wanna say I'm so sorry because I can't imagine what you have lived through over the last month that must have been terrifying and terrible for you to have gone through this. But I wanted to ask, why do you think the backlash to this film has been the way that it has been so aggressive? - You know, there's this notion of, if there's dirty laundry, you don't clean it outside. And I think this was at least partially, there is this code of silence in the Israeli society that says we're not allowed to speak about these crimes that are happening, not inside the society, but especially not within a film that people, that are not Israelis can watch and see. And that provoked a lot of anger and accusations as you're saying that we are traitors. But I have to say that I obviously, I don't see it that way. I don't think journalism or filmmaking is treason. And I think it's our duty as Israelis to be critical of what our government is doing, of what our army is doing. Confirmism and lack of criticism leads to crimes being committed in Gaza, but it also leads to a collapse of a society. It's something unhealthy, it's something dangerous. It allows the right, it allows people like Netanyahu and others to remain in power for much longer. It sort of like accepts and normalizes this trend and shifts to the right and far right within Israeli society. So I think we should hold our ground. And yes, I think crimes, there's this notion of hasbarat of like explaining of propaganda and explaining, you know, why what Israel is doing is justified. And sure, I can get why people would want maybe to do that, but I think at the end of the day, crimes should not be explained. The killing of so many children should not be explained. It should be stopped. And that is what we are trying to help do with this film. - The idea came out with this multi-page response that effectively disputes all of the claims made in their film. Can you just take us through what it was they said? - Yeah, interestingly, disputes most of the claims, we talked about where is daddy and the systematic targeting of people in their homes. That is one they didn't speak about in the statement. I don't know why, but it's interesting. Yes, we're obviously very confident in the information in our film, the idea of said, you know, they denied the use of AI without human involvement, which we were not claiming like that. They denied to NASA numbers in the hundreds. They denied the number 500. We, the reason why we feel very confident in this is because, first of all, I mean, this is, many of these claims have been corroborated, not only by us, together with the Guardian's investigations desk, but also by highly respectable media outlets in the world. Washington Post, in New York Times, just recently, Harretts, they'll speak ill, also based on Israeli security officials and sources. We're also very confident about, you know, the practices that soldiers speak about in our film because we've verified these claims with multiple sources and because they match what you see on the ground in Gaza. If you look at Gaza right now, you see a place that is totally destroyed. If you look satellite imagery, like city after city, it's just rubble. The majority of the people killed, you know, are civilians. So this, this matches what the soldiers in our film are saying and not what the military spokesperson is saying that is talking about a highly surgical, calculated campaign with so many safeguards to prevent civilian harm. You know, maybe that exists in some kind of theoretical world or on paper, but I don't know, but in the reality, the policies that were in effect, that soldiers are talking about, what has actually happened is not that. It is a different kind of campaign and it's results we are seeing on the ground in Gaza. (suspenseful music) The backlash has been very wide as well in terms of the different kind of angles that people have been coming at you from. I've seen accusations that this film could be weaponized to increase anti-semitism, that it's a blood libel. I wonder what your response to those, those accusations are? - Yeah, I think it's undeniable that anti-semitism is on the rise and it's horrible and we oppose it. We are Jewish ourselves and we would never want to do anything that increases anti-semitism. And I think there's a danger in associating, you know, journalistic work which reveals crimes of the Israeli state with the hatred of Jewish people. Even if there will be extremely bad faith actors that weaponize our film in that way, I think we should be very clear that we are rejecting that completely and it should not stop us from doing our role as journalists. I think, you know, journalists and filmmakers, we should be able to report on truthfully and that is the main point in the film. And in the long term, I think that, you know, the safety of Palestinians and Israelis is connected. I really do believe that. And so stopping these crimes is in the long term, I think, beneficial for everybody. Why do you think that at this moment in time, the film has become such a political threat or a political opportunity by Netanyahu's government in Israel? Yeah, so, you know, elections are coming up in Israel at the end of the month, and the Israeli right Netanyahu himself are trying to use any opportunity that he has, that they have to get more votes and to create loyalty tests for the parties in opposition, and because Gaza has been an issue that all of the Israeli Jewish Israeli political spectrum from the very far right to the center left, has had quite similar positions on, justifying these military actions in Gaza. Our film provided to be, I think, for Netanyahu, a good loyalty test for the parties in opposition, telling them, "Why have you not condemned the Gaza filmmakers?" And indeed, many of them ended up taking the same position in Netanyahu, unfortunately. It's interesting because Benjamin Netanyahu at first denied everything and said that everything that is being said in the film is not true, but he's actually saying that there needs to be an investigation to find his soldiers who are revealing secrets. So I think, in a way, it's kind of a, it supports what we are saying, that everything that is being said in the film is true, and the soldiers who are speaking in the film are just giving the testimonies of what has happened inside those systems. So I think it also even strengthened the film and what is being said in it. So Rachel, you received standing evasion when your film premiered at Venice, 25 minutes, standing evasion, which I actually imagine must have been quite uncomfortable for you guys to sit through. The film is currently playing in cinemas across America and Europe, and it's opening in the UK today. It's also going online on the Guardian website in November, worldwide for everyone to watch for free. I wanted to ask you why it was so important to you that this film was free to view to everybody. Yeah, so it's right. It's not a usual distribution plan for a film, but I think because we feel it's, you know, it's urgent, because these things are still ongoing. It's not something to stop. We decided to go to Venice and to do it theatrically, also to get attention, of course, as a film, to use this stage, but we feel that as soon as possible, also people in Israel, in the US, in the UK can watch it. And finally, I wanted to ask you both a question about, you know, this is not your first film, but I wanted to know, you know, has making NASA changed you personally, has changed the way that you see yourselves, Israel, human nature, and what people are capable of. Wow, I think it probably changed me in a lot of ways. I haven't begun to, they just, I lost a lot of weight. I became much thinner because of the really distress around the film. Yeah, it somehow made me less, maybe optimistic, I don't know, but I do feel that it's kind of hard to, still hard to say. I still feel like we're in here. It's still too close to it, yeah. Yeah, I don't know what you feel. No, I think I felt also understanding the amount of responsibility we have as Israel is, we have this access. We are there on the ground. And I think the main thing that may be changed, I also felt it when making another land is that there is so much to do. And I mean, of course, it doesn't solve anything. We want the Oscar with another land and still communities are still being destroyed in Safaria time. I'm not saying it's, I don't know if it's the right tool or the right thing to do, but I think there is so much to be done. And I think, yeah, as Israelis, this is our responsibilities. It is an agonizing watch, but I'm astonishing film and I really hope as many people as possible see your incredible work on this. And thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was Yval Abraham and Rachel Saw. My thanks to them. And again, although it's a really difficult watch, I do urge you to go and see NASA if you can. It's in cinemas across the world now. And it will be streaming for free on the Guardian website in November. We should also mention a couple of people on the team at the Guardian who were involved in additional reporting on NASA, Paul Lewis and Harry Davies on Investigations. And that's it for today. This episode was produced by Alex A. Tech and presented by me Annie Kelly. The multimedia editor was Lawrence Topham, sound design was by Brian McNamara, and the executive producer was Homme Calili. And we'll be back later on today with the latest. This is the Guardian.