Yuval Abraham wants Israelis to feel sorry for him. In a Channel 13 interview this week, the co-director of NAZA said he is afraid he won't be able to return, insisting, "I have nothing to do abroad." He described Israel as his home, the only place he wants to live.
It's a moving line. It is also remarkable coming from a man who has just spent three years building a film that tells the world his home deliberately slaughters civilians.
NAZA, named for the IDF's Hebrew acronym for collateral damage, alleges that Israel systematically targeted Palestinian civilians during the Gaza war. It claims the number of civilian deaths considered acceptable in a strike was elastic, sometimes fewer than a dozen and sometimes 200 or even 500, according to the anonymous personnel interviewed. Europe loved it. Israel did not.
The anger is not coming from one corner. Abraham and Szor face condemnation across the political spectrum, not just from the right. The film has united a country that agrees on almost nothing. Culture Minister Miki Zohar accused the directors of betraying the state and said he would move to strip their citizenship. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced two bills: one allowing citizenship to be revoked from those who slander IDF soldiers abroad, and another raising the defamation damages they can be sued for. "Their place isn't here," he said. Even Ofer Winter, who is running against Netanyahu from within the right, told a Rishon Lezion rally that Abraham was right to be afraid. "You have nothing to return to," he said.
Social media has been merciless. Abraham says he deleted his accounts after seeing attacks that used photos of him and his mother.
And the anger is understandable. Israeli families who sent their children to Gaza after October 7 are now watching those children cast as war criminals before a cheering audience in Venice, on the strength of 24 anonymous voices no one can question. Even Raviv Drucker, a journalist no one would call a Netanyahu loyalist and one of the few Israelis to have seen the entire film, repeatedly questioned in that same interview how the directors could have verified the allegations. The IDF has requested a screening, but its leaders still have not seen the film. Abraham also defended his decision not to include testimony from Israelis who survived Hamas captivity in Gaza.
So when Abraham says he is scared, Israelis are entitled to answer: you chose this. You took the trust your Israeli identity earned you, carried it to Europe, and spent it on an indictment of the people who defend you. You do not get to accept a record-breaking ovation abroad and then expect a hero's welcome at Ben Gurion.
Far-right protesters rallied at the home of Abraham's parents. Graffiti of the two directors labeled "traitors" appeared on a wall in Ashdod. President Isaac Herzog said revoking citizenship has no chance, and the Foreign Ministry has reportedly told diplomats to tone down their attacks on the film, reportedly recognizing that the outcry is fanning the flames.
That being said, the strongest answer to NAZA is not a mob at his parents' door. It is the truth: soldiers who warned civilians before strikes, commanders who called off attacks, and a nation that fought a war it did not choose against an enemy that hides behind its own people.
Abraham says he will seek a screening in Israel as soon as possible. Let him bring it. Let Israelis see it, question it and answer it. That is how a confident democracy deals with a film like this.
As for his welcome home, he should not expect a warm one. He will be faced with understandable fury, and even those with whom he grew up and the people from his moshav already want less than nothing to do with him, not to mention the rest of us.
He already did enough damage with No Other Land. But that wasn't enough for him. Sadly for him, and for us, he is either too evil or too stupid to understand that this film could get Jews and Israeli hurt or even killed in the future.
He should stay far away from this country that despises him, and for which he has no one to blame but himself.
