Here is a devastating critique of the movie NAZA: “NAZA’s claims about IDF conduct in Gaza are grave. So are the film’s journalistic flaws,” by Emanuel Fabian and Nurit Yohanan, Algemeiner, September 27, 2026:
The documentary reports that 73,000 [that figure has risen to 73,500] people in Gaza were killed during the war, though it does not mention that the figure comes from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its overall death toll.
The Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall toll is largely accurate, with senior IDF officials estimating that two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative.
Those senior IDF officials have overlooked the fact that of the 73,500 people who according to Hamas have died in Gaza, 25,000 were — according to the IDF — Hamas combatants. Of the remaining 48,500, we know from historical data, about 8,000 Gazans die each year from accidents and disease. That means about 24,000 Gazans died over the past three years from non-combat-related causes. Doing the math, that means 24,500 civilians died as a result of the war in Gaza. So the IDF’s estimate that “two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative” is wide of the mark. The real civilian-to-combatant death ratio is 24,500:25,000, or approximately 1:1. The UN has determined that in all the wars fought since World War II, the civilian-to-combatant ratio has been 9:1. In Afghanistan, the American military brought that ratio down to 4:1, and in Iraq, to 3:1. The IDF managed in the Gaza war to achieve the scarcely believable ratio of 1:1. No mention of that, of course, in NAZA.
Based on those estimates, around 50,000 Palestinian civilians would have been killed in Gaza during the war, though the film leaves that figure out, apparently since it is based on IDF estimates….
To repeat: 48,500 Palestinian civilians have died in Gaza since October 7, 2023, but about half of those who died did so as a result of accidents and disease. Of course, the makers of NAZA do not mention that. Nor, it must be said, have the Israelis pointed that out. They should start to do so.
The film mentions the destruction of neighborhoods and the movement of much of Gaza’s population southward but provides limited explanation of those developments. One interviewee says the Mawasi area in southern Gaza reached “300% occupancy” at one point during the war, without explaining why.
Al-Mawasi was a “safe zone” that the IDF set up in Gaza, where Palestinians could move, in the assurance that there would be no bombing or other attacks on the area. None of this is mentioned in the “documentary.”
Another section addresses shooting incidents near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution points, but at no point does it identify the organization by name. It only presents testimony from soldiers who said they shot at Gazans who had strayed from designated routes while traveling to obtain food.
The omitted context could have affected how viewers understood the incidents, regardless of whether it supported or contradicted Israel’s position….
Israel set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to facilitate the collection and distribution of food aid in Gaza. NAZA fails to mention this. It also fails to mention that Israel sent into Gaza 1.2 milliion tons of humanitarian aid, both food and medicine.
At another point, a soldier argues that, just as the Nazis “lived with what they did,” Israelis can carry out bombings and then continue with their daily lives.
The IDF killers are just like the Nazis, NAZA obliquely suggests. They expect that despite their crimes, and just as happened with so many Nazis, to live contentedly when the war is over.
NAZA is full of stories from anonymous sources that are both unverified and unverifiable. The film neglects the context, that in which Israel is forced to fight an urban war against an enemy determined to embed both its fighters and weapons in and among the civilian population. It counts the Gazans who died as a result of accidents and disease as combat-related deaths. The film fails to allow the Israelis to ever deny a charge, leaving viewers to assume that since the IDF did not contradict a claim, the charge must be true. Such, for example, is the preposterous claim that the IDF planned for 500 people to be wiped out as collateral damage in an attack on a Hamas senior commander. Israel’s forceful denial goes unmentioned. Read the report by Emanuel Fabian and Nurit Yohanan before you see the movie, and read it again after, and you will see how flimsy is NAZA’s evidence, how malignant are its charges.
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