Rather than the usual smiles and gratitude, self-important solemnity greeted the Venice Film Festival audience as Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor accepted the Special Jury Prize for their new anti-Israel film, NAZA.
The title is the Hebrew military acronym for collateral damage, and the resemblance to another word is not one the filmmakers appear to have worked hard to avoid.
The critically acclaimed libel centers on a single claim: Israel is Skynet, using AI to identify and eliminate threats in Gaza with little regard for collateral damage. Framed around the anonymous testimony of 24 people who claim to have served in the intelligence unit 8200, the film paints a picture of target lists generated from data scraped off thousands of hacked phones.
It also shows an interface where an officer clicks on a rooftop and reads off how many people inside will die – with no column separating the infants from the adults, and with parameters that permit the slaughter.
Putting aside the question of the film’s accuracy, the IDF’s response to its explosive debut was a placid, “Please allow us to watch the full film so that we can address each of the claims on its merits.” Rather than waste money on movie tickets, the army could simply have checked the multiple articles Abraham wrote on the subject for +972 Magazine more than two years ago.
His articles cited the same kind of sources and made the same accusations. Yet two years later, the IDF Spokesperson’s response is just as wooden and ineffective. It categorically rejects the claims and insists that strike selection and approval decisions were made by human personnel only.
It also attacks the sourcing, noting that the testimonies come from people whose identities cannot be verified, including whether they served in the IDF at all, in what capacity, or whether they were involved in the matters described.
Learning good communication
Unsurprisingly, this was not as compelling a message as “AI designates 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants,” “15 to 20 civilians permitted per junior operative,” or “20 seconds of review” per strike.
That argument did not work against six anonymous sources in 2024. It was never going to work against 24 on screen in 2026.
This reception should hardly have been a surprise. The original article’s publication drew follow-ups from The Guardian, ABC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many more. The weak response in 2024 already revealed a distinct lack of imagination, or of understanding, in public diplomacy.
Perhaps no one in the unit has watched any of the thousands of dystopian sci-fi movies about rogue AI. Why else would it not be prepared for the obvious negative reaction to the deployment of artificial intelligence on the battlefield?
We know, at the very least, that former IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi has: he previously boasted of the “Matrix-like” capabilities the IDF had acquired. Nor was his the only comparison in poor taste. “Target factory” is another term the IDF coined.
The job of a good communicator is to be present for the takeoffs, not just the crash landings. Controversial policies and technologies need a response ready to launch. Not deaf statements, but material in multiple media formats, with compelling framing and information. In the empty space, worse and more political responses grow.
Culture Minister Miki Zohar called the film vile and treasonous, and said he would act to revoke the directors’ citizenship. That idea then infected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Together, they fed international stories about censorious Israelis and promoted the film better than any publicist could have, with the IDF response relegated to yesterday’s news.
The last three years of war have been a desperate scramble by Israel and the IDF never to be caught by surprise again. They have done an incredible job. But in those same three years, the Spokesperson’s Unit has yet to be prepared for an accusation.
The writer serves as the English director of the Ribo Center and the editor of Amit Segal’s newsletter, It’s Noon in Israel.