“The tragic consequences of wars do not justify distorting the facts,” the IDF said.
By United with Israel Staff
The IDF issued a sweeping rebuttal Thursday to the Gaza documentary “NAZA,” accusing its filmmakers of presenting a “distorted, misleading and unrealistic” account of Israeli targeting procedures while relying on anonymous testimony, factual errors and claims the military says are false.
The documentary features anonymous testimony from people presented as Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel involved in operations in Gaza, making allegations concerning civilian casualties, artificial intelligence and Israel’s targeting process.
“NAZA” is the Hebrew military acronym for nezek agavi, or collateral damage.
In its 17-page response, the IDF accused the filmmakers of turning the military’s procedures for estimating and minimizing civilian casualties into purported evidence that Israel is indifferent to civilian life.
The military said precisely the opposite is true, arguing that estimating potential civilian harm is required under international humanitarian law and is used by commanders to determine whether an attack is lawful, impose additional precautions, alter the attack plan or cancel a strike altogether.
The IDF also said the filmmakers did not submit their allegations to the military for review and response before publication and did not provide enough identifying information about alleged incidents for them to be independently examined.
One of the film’s most explosive allegations is that an Israeli strike was approved despite an expectation that as many as 500 civilians could be killed.
The IDF flatly denied the claim.
“The IDF never planned, approved or carried out any strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians, or anything close to that number, were expected to be killed,” the response states.
The military said the filmmakers prominently featured the allegation despite lacking evidence to verify it.
The IDF similarly rejected claims that Israel had a blanket policy allowing 20 expected civilian casualties when targeting lower-ranking terrorists or as many as 200 when targeting senior commanders.
According to the military, the film confuses thresholds requiring higher-level authorization with permission to kill a predetermined number of civilians.
Every proposed strike still requires an individual proportionality assessment, the IDF said, adding that an authorization threshold of 200 expected casualties “never existed.”
The IDF also challenged the film’s portrayal of “Lavender,” an intelligence database that has been at the center of allegations concerning Israel’s use of artificial intelligence in Gaza.
According to the military, Lavender is not a list of approved targets. It is an intelligence database used to cross-reference information about members of organized armed groups, and inclusion in the database neither designates someone as a target nor authorizes an attack.
The IDF further rejected allegations that artificial intelligence autonomously generated tens of thousands of targets.
It said human intelligence analysts identify potential targets, which must then be approved by qualified officers and undergo a broader planning and authorization process before an operational commander makes a decision to strike.
“AI does not determine whether an object or person will be designated as a target, or whether a target will be struck,” the military said.
The response also accused the documentary of stripping the Gaza war of crucial context, including the Hamas-led October 7 massacre and Hamas’s use of civilian areas for military purposes.
The IDF said Hamas embedded fighters, weapons and military infrastructure in and beneath hospitals, schools, mosques and other civilian locations, creating precisely the difficult targeting environment at the center of the documentary’s allegations.
At the same time, the military said the film largely ignores Israeli measures intended to protect civilians, including warnings, modifications and cancellations of strikes, humanitarian coordination and extensive legal review.
The IDF said numerous attacks were canceled or never approved because of the risk to civilians and that commanders sometimes called off attacks in real time after unexpectedly identifying civilians near a target.
The military also rejected testimony suggesting that an attitude of “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza” had taken hold within the IDF.
“The distinction between terrorists and uninvolved civilians is a cornerstone of the IDF,” the response said, adding that any such statement by an interviewee represented a personal view rather than military policy.
The IDF said it welcomes legitimate scrutiny and investigates credible allegations of misconduct, including through criminal investigations when warranted, but argued that the documentary does not provide a reliable basis for such scrutiny.
“The tragic consequences of wars do not justify distorting the facts,” the IDF concluded.
The military accused the filmmakers of omitting necessary context, ignoring previous IDF explanations and using “emotional manipulation and cinematic effects” to portray the Israeli military as inhumane.
“The IDF acted and continues to act humanely, even if the filmmakers did everything in their power to conceal this fact,” the response concluded.
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