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Content warning: This review discusses the killing of civilians, including children and babies, in the context of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.

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“Collateral damage,” says an Israeli military insider. “The number of civilians who will die from a strike.”

That’s what “Naza” translates to. A Hebrew term meaning collateral damage. 

I found myself thinking about the distance between knowing what’s happening in Gaza and sitting through an 80-minute documentary on how it’s happening. Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, this chilling film pulls back the curtains on how the Israeli military has mass-killed Palestinian civilians using AI-assisted targeting systems. 

The Guardian-produced award-winning documentary includes testimonies of 24 anonymous Israeli soldiers who describe their job as somewhat of a video game. What I can’t seem to shake off is how, for many years, the violence has become routine for them, the killings are calculated, and the language used makes it seem like they’re trying to complete a mission on Call of Duty. 

Under the cover of darkness, the Israeli intelligence officers speak to the director with their identities concealed and voices altered. These interviews take place on rooftops across Tel Aviv – where no one can see them, but they see everyone. A striking parallel to how they target innocent civilians. Alongside their accounts, viewers are shown residential apartment blocks with glimpses into individual rooms, offering a sense of the families who lived there before they were annihilated.

The film brings to attention the growing role of AI becoming part of a military calculation.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) reveal how the system compares the communication habits of known Hamas members with other monitored devices. Individuals whose phone activity appears similar may then be flagged as targets. 

In one particularly disturbing section of the film, the officers disclose that they hack into the mobile phones of Palestinian civilians, including children as young as 12. In one case, they gained access to a 12-year-old girl’s phone, monitoring her calls and messages to her mum and dad. They would search for specific words such as “baba” and “return”. A question like, “When is dad coming home?” helped them establish who was present at the property and when someone would come back in. Once their target had been identified, the attack would follow.

The unsettling part of all this was the error rate anticipated and the number of civilian deaths they discussed. The interviewees dispute the concept of human shields, and the documentary raises the question of how much Palestinian suffering is accepted in the pursuit of military objectives.

As I sat in anticipation on the chair inside the screening room, surrounded by distressed audience members sniffling and shaking their heads, the film suddenly became an even harder watch. 

When the director asked one of the officers how they could carry out an attack after hearing a baby cry in the background, his response turned to describing how the atmosphere has been filled with hatred since October 7th. Therefore, their “goal is to kill.” 

What Naza exposes is not only the brutality of Israel’s military system, but the ways institutions teach people to understand their actions and normalise their behaviour.

One IOF member in the film explained how they were not allowed to have any moral principles, only technical ones. Another follows on to say that he now regrets doing it all. 

There is no doubt there will be backlash from what is seen as an extremely controversial film. The Israeli government has already denounced Naza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Israel’s attorney general and the head of Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) to identify the officers who spoke in the documentary and pursue action against them over “harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests”.

The directors Abraham and Szor have also faced savage condemnation and attack from the Israeli government, including threats to revoke their citizenship. The hostility has even extended to their families, with government supporters reportedly pledging to target them when they return to Israel. Protesters have also gathered outside Szor’s parents’ home, chanting for the directors to receive the death penalty. 

Many of us have watched the harrowing footage coming out of Gaza, the news articles and the endless testimonies. But the question Naza left me with is: what do we do with what we already know? What do we do with the knowledge that a “Naza” rate of, say, 20 civilians (an anticipated civilian death allowance) were killed with a click of a computer button?

As the credits rolled, the screening room was eerily silent. I left feeling frustrated, knowing how little the documentary can change. Thinking about all the lives they tricked and calculated just to add to their scoreboard. 

The genocide in Gaza is still ongoing, with the death toll exceeding 74,000 civilians. Thousands of people are still under the rubble and at least 21,000 children have been killed.

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Naza is screening in cinemas across more than 50 countries, including the UK and the US. From late November, the documentary will also be available to watch for free on the Guardian’s website.