Israel minister seeks to strip citizenship from NAZA directors after Venice win
Israel's culture minister Miki Zohar has called for two Israeli directors to be stripped of their citizenship over their Gaza documentary NAZA.
Zohar made the call on Sunday, 13 September, a day after the film won a prize at the Venice Film Festival. He accused directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor of "treason against the state", according to The Guardian.
"I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state," Zohar wrote on X. In a second post, he accused the pair of being willing to "harm their homeland in order to receive applause from antisemites around the world".
NAZA is about Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza. The title comes from an acronym used by Israel's intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike on Gaza.
The film was produced by the Guardian. In it, Abraham and Szor interview 24 Israeli military or intelligence whistleblowers about AI-powered targeting systems used to bombard Gaza. AI-powered here means computer systems used to help select targets.
At Venice, NAZA won a special jury prize, an award given by the festival jury for distinctive work. Its premiere received a 25-minute standing ovation, described as a festival record.
Abraham and Szor won an Oscar in 2025 for No Other Land, about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The West Bank is Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Stripping citizenship is a high legal bar in Israel. The country's Supreme Court confirmed in 2022 that the state may remove nationality for failure to show "loyalty", for example through espionage or treason. The law was widened in 2023 to cover people convicted of "terrorism".
Even then, revocation is not a single minister's decision. Under Israeli law, the interior minister must submit the request, the justice minister must approve it, and judges must validate it.
The Israeli military said it "categorically rejects" the allegations in NAZA. It criticised the use of anonymous testimonies whose identities "cannot be verified".
