Israeli Culture Minister Threatens to Revoke Citizenship of 'NAZA' Documentary Directors

Miki Zohar, Israel's Minister of Culture, announced his intention to strip two documentary filmmakers of their Israeli citizenship. The targets were Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, co-directors of a film called "NAZA" that had just premiered at the Venice Film Festival to significant international recognition. Zohar's statement was unambiguous: he called the work a betrayal of the state and promised immediate action to revoke their citizenship.

The minister's language was sharp and personal. He wrote that the filmmakers were consumed by "self-loathing" and willing to damage their own country simply to win approval from what he characterized as antisemitic audiences abroad. The accusation of betrayal was central to his argument—that by making this film, Abraham and Szor had committed an act against Israel itself.

"NAZA" documents what its official description calls "the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza." The film had arrived at Venice to substantial critical response. When it premiered, the audience gave it a standing ovation that lasted 24 minutes and 30 seconds—the longest in the festival's recorded history. The festival's jury awarded the film a special prize for its direction.

When Abraham took the stage to accept the award, he addressed the controversy directly. He noted the difficulty of standing before the world while Israeli politicians and journalists attacked the film without having watched it. He spoke about the importance of confronting reality rather than denying it, and he made a case for why the film mattered beyond Israel's borders. He called on Israelis to see it, on Europeans to see it—particularly those in Italy and Germany, whose governments he said were blocking international pressure on Israel. He also called on Americans to watch, pointing out that American funding underwrites much of what the film documents.

The threat from Zohar represented a sharp escalation in the political response to the documentary. Abraham's defense at Venice had been measured and substantive, grounded in the argument that denial of documented events allows those events to continue. The minister's response was categorical: the film was not merely wrong or misguided, but an act of national betrayal worthy of stripping citizenship—a penalty typically reserved for acts of espionage or renunciation.

The collision between the two positions—one arguing that documentation and confrontation of difficult truths serve the national interest, the other that such documentation itself constitutes betrayal—laid bare a fundamental disagreement about what loyalty to a state means, and what citizens owe their government when they believe that government is committing crimes.