Zohar asks Interior to strip NAZA directors of Israeli citizenship

Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar said on Sunday night that he would move to revoke the citizenship of Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the directors of NAZA. On Monday he asked the Interior Ministry and legal and security officials to test whether the pair had committed treason or aided an enemy in wartime. The 80-minute film won the special jury prize at the 83rd Venice Film Festival on 12 September. It received a 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere.

NAZA takes its title from an Israeli military acronym for collateral damage. Abraham and Szor say they interviewed 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, speaking on condition that their identities stay hidden, about targeting systems used in Gaza. The festival synopsis described those systems as producing calculated mass civilian deaths. Abraham said the officers described the killing as systemic, "not by accident, but by design," and as policy built on the dehumanisation of Palestinians. The two directors previously made No Other Land, which won an Academy Award.

Zohar wrote on X that the Venice prize was "horrifying" and that the directors' "burning self-hatred" was an act of treason. "As Culture Minister, I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state," he said. He tied the demand to a film-industry reform he had already pushed, so that, in his words, Israelis would no longer pay for attacks on IDF soldiers. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote that the pair were "a disgrace" and should "disappear."

Revoking nationality is legal in Israel and rare. The Supreme Court held in 2022 that the state may strip citizenship for terror or treason. A 2023 change added terrorism convictions. The interior minister must file the request. The justice minister must approve it. Judges must confirm it. Zohar is the culture minister, so Monday's referral to Interior is the first formal step he can take without holding the statutory pen himself. Haaretz reported that he asked officials to examine treason and aid to the enemy, which is a higher bar than a press statement.

No official has publicly denied the content of the interviews. The argument from Zohar and Ben-Gvir is about loyalty and about who may speak for Israel abroad. Abraham and Szor are Israeli citizens who took Israeli military sources to an Italian festival and won a prize. That sequence is what the minister now wants treated as a security file. If Interior declines, the threat stays on social media. If it proceeds, the pair will face a process that has almost no recent civilian precedent outside terror cases.

Venice's jury, which also gave the Golden Lion to May el-Toukhy's Woman Unknown, treated NAZA as a film about method and testimony. Jerusalem's culture ministry treated the same object as a charge sheet. The legal test now sits with ministries that did not sit on that jury. The practical question for the directors is whether they can return to Israel and keep a passport while the file moves.