The IDF on Monday sharply rejected a claim in the new documentary NAZA that the military had approved a strike in Gaza despite an estimate that as many as 500 civilians could be killed, calling the allegation “completely false.”
The claim appears in the film, whose title is an abbreviation of the Hebrew term for collateral damage and which features interviews with 24 men and women presented as soldiers from the IDF’s Unit 8200 intelligence division.
Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after winning at the Venice Film Festival
(Photo: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
In an English-language response posted on X, the IDF said: “This is completely false. The IDF has never planned, approved, or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians or anything near that number were anticipated to be killed.”
“Nor was any credible claim raised throughout the war suggesting that an IDF strike had caused anything near that number of fatalities,” the military added.
The IDF also challenged the filmmakers’ ability to substantiate the allegation.
“The filmmakers couldn't possibly verify this claim, there is no real supporting evidence, and yet they published it anyway,” the military said. “Additionally, nothing about the interviewee, not his service nor his role can be independently checked and verified.”
“No such strike was ever planned, approved, or carried out yet this is the claim the filmmakers chose to promote their movie with. Judge the rest accordingly.”
The post had received more than 372,000 views by Monday morning.
In a longer response published by the IDF, the military said the documentary relied on anonymous testimony from people whose identities could not be independently confirmed, including whether they had served in the IDF, what positions they held or whether they had been involved in the matters they described.
The military also argued that some of the claims dealt with national and military strategy that would have been beyond the knowledge of junior-ranking soldiers, and said several scenarios described in the film concerned matters in which intelligence personnel of the type purportedly interviewed would not normally have been involved.
The IDF further rejected the film’s characterization of civilian casualties from lawful strikes as intentional or as part of “genocide,” saying such claims misused legal terminology.
The military said it operates in Gaza to defend Israeli civilians and targets terrorist organizations, primarily Hamas, in accordance with international law and the laws of armed conflict.
It said Hamas systematically embeds terrorists and military infrastructure within civilian areas, while the IDF takes measures intended to reduce harm to civilians.
The military added that specific suspicions of unlawful conduct by soldiers are subject to investigation through independent enforcement mechanisms, and that soldiers who encounter suspected violations are required to report them.
Addressing allegations in the film concerning artificial intelligence, the IDF said decisions on selecting targets and approving strikes are made by human personnel in accordance with military directives, not by AI systems.
‘There was approval for 500’
In the scene at the center of the dispute, an anonymous interviewee describes what he says is a system used by the IDF to estimate collateral damage before strikes.
“You have this screen, you have this map of the neighborhood,” he says, describing an interface that he claims allows personnel to select individual buildings and see an estimate of how many people could be harmed if they were struck.
According to the interviewee, the system contained highly detailed information on residents of particular homes and apartments.
Asked whether the system distinguished between children, infants and adults for the purpose of calculating collateral damage, he answers that it did not.
The interviewer then asks him for the highest number he remembers being approved for a single strike.
“I can’t say how many were killed because they never check that, but there was approval for 500,” the interviewee says.
The IDF flatly denied that assertion.
NAZA, which is competing for the Golden Lion at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, was filmed on rooftops in Tel Aviv during the war in Gaza. It presents testimony from 24 people identified by the filmmakers as Unit 8200 soldiers and focuses on allegations surrounding the IDF’s collateral-damage policies, bombing campaign and targeted killings.
The film also addresses the military’s use of artificial intelligence, with interviewees alleging that AI-assisted systems were used to recommend targets based in part on intercepted communications, including in cases where strikes could endanger relatives of the intended target.
The IDF rejects the suggestion that artificial intelligence makes targeting or strike-approval decisions, saying those decisions remain exclusively in human hands.