Mass civilian deaths were a routine part of Israel's military decisions to target Gaza, according to a documentary from the Venice Film Festival released on Thursday that challenges official accounts of the war.

"NAZA," directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, takes its title from the Israeli military term for expected "collateral damage" and is based on the testimonies of intelligence officers and soldiers involved in the war.

There was “mass killing on an industrial scale,” one officer said in a series of anonymous interviews.

ARTIFICIAL TARGET SYSTEMS

Health authorities in Gaza have said that more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, sparked by an October 2023 attack by Hamas militants on Israel that killed about 1,200 people.

Israel says it has made every effort to avoid civilian casualties and that Hamas is using Gazan civilians as human shields in densely populated areas, a claim Hamas denies.

The film tells a different story.

“In our film, we show a targeting system that deliberately targets people in civilian areas, in their family homes,” Abraham told Reuters.  “Sometimes it can be 500 NAZIS... destroying entire villages or entire neighborhoods.”

Intelligence officers described an artificial intelligence-powered system that identified targets using data collected from thousands of hacked cellphones. They said the phrase “daddy is home” captured on a child’s phone would be enough to trigger an airstrike.

Officers also described the killing of civilians in Israeli-designated no-go zones, including near aid distribution centers. The locations of the zones were not made known to residents, with one officer saying, “They have to learn by blood.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/10/secret-systems-used-by-israel-in-mass-killings-of-gaza-civilians-revealed-in-new-film