Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett criticized Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s feature doc NAZA in a lengthy X post this afternoon following the film’s buzzy debut at the Venice Film Festival.
“Yesterday, a film accusing Israel of genocide premiered,” Bennett wrote.
“It’s a horrific blood libel against our sons and daughters. What makes it especially painful and infuriating is that this lie comes from Israeli filmmakers and is now being spread around the world.”
Bennett continued to list crimes that he claimed were committed on October 7 by Hamas and concluded that he is “proud” and “deeply grateful” to the Israeli reservists and soldiers “standing between us and that next massacre.”
“To portray them as perpetrators of “genocide” is not courageous art,” he wrote. “It is a cowardly blood libel. And I will not remain silent.”
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The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The commission’s report states that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out by Israel since the start of the conflict with Hamas in 2023: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births. The report cites statements by Israeli leaders as evidence of genocidal intent. Israel denies the accusation.
Bennett was Prime Minister of Israel for a year, between June 2021 and 2022. He is currently one of the leading candidates in Israel’s 2026 election.
NAZA debuted last night in Venice and landed a sensational 25-minute ovation following its premiere screening inside the Sala Grande. The 25-minute ovation sets a new record for any movie at a major festival, surpassing the near 24 minutes scored by The Voice of Hind Rajab at last year’s Venice festival and the 22 minutes scored by Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s comfortably the longest ovation at this year’s Venice.
Based on interviews with 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, the documentary exposes the AI, phone surveillance, and crude points-based systems deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza to decide targets, Hamas-related or otherwise, and then take them out in their homes regardless of whether children and other family members are likely to be killed in the strike as well.
It follows and builds on Abraham and Szor’s No Other Land, winner of the Best Documentary Academy Award in 2025, co-directed with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, documenting Israeli army-backed efforts to erase the West Bank Palestinian villages of Masafer Yatta, while painting a wider picture of Israeli occupation.
Abraham and Szor spoke with Deadline ahead of their world premiere in Venice. You can read that interview here.
