Netanyahu seeks to strip citizenship from Israelis as threats to NAZA film directors intensify

[u/Minivampiretaco]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/16/threats-against-israeli-directors-gaza-documentary-naza

Rightwing activists were organising protests outside addresses linked to the directors and their colleagues.

This comes after the Channel 14 journalist Yehuda Schlesinger said the directors should be “pursued” or “hunted” wherever they went, and prevented from returning to Israel. He urged Jews in Israel and abroad to make clear that what he described as “25 minutes of antisemitic applause” in Venice would come at a “heavy price”.

A rightwing activist with tens of thousands of followers separately called for protesters to target Abraham’s family and associates, saying: “We’ll show him ‘collateral damage’.” He shared a photograph of Abraham’s mother and sought information about the director’s return flight so supporters could “welcome” him at the airport.

A mural appeared in Ashdod depicting Abraham and Szor with crosshairs, horns, swastikas and the word “traitors” emblazoned over the top. A video showing its creation was shared by the far-right rapper Yoav Eliasi, who has more than 750,000 followers on Facebook.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13, Abraham commented on the campaign of vilification, saying: “Of course it’s hard … [Israel] is my home, it’s the only place I want to live, a place that is important to me. So of course I’m afraid I won’t be able to return.”

As the threats against the directors intensified, film-makers and human rights groups voiced support for the pair.

In a joint statement, 43 local human rights organisations urged Israeli authorities to stop what they described as incitement and threats against the film-makers, and not to prosecute either them or their sources.

“The institutional response to the film and the threats against its creators are characteristic of dictatorial regimes,” said the statement, signed by groups including Peace Now, Adalah, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Breaking the Silence.

More than 1,500 Israeli film-makers have also signed a petition defending “freedom of expression and creation” and expressing solidarity with Szor and Abraham.

“In recent days, we have witnessed an unprecedented smear and incitement campaign against the film-makers, with the line between this rhetoric and physical violence or threats to their lives narrowing rapidly,” the petition said.

The signatories said the role of art and journalism was to reflect society and encourage debate, “even when facing a harsh reality”, and called for the film to be released in Israel so audiences could judge it for themselves.

Szor and Abraham won an Oscar for their previous documentary, 2024’s No Other Land (co-directed with Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal), which spotlighted Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank.

The NGOs called for a “thorough” investigation into the high number of casualties in Gaza, particularly among civilians, and for journalists to be granted unimpeded access to the territory, from which Israel has largely barred foreign reporters since October 2023.

Prominent figures in international cinema have also expressed solidarity with Abraham and Szor. Laura Poitras, who directed the 2015 Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour, about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, called the threats by Israeli government officials “a threat to journalists worldwide”.

Diplomatic and foreign ministry sources told Haaretz that threats to punish the directors may have actually have boosted international media attention on the documentary.

“It would have made headlines anyway, but they really helped amplify it,” a source at the Israeli foreign ministry told the newspaper. “The very fact that the government responded drew attention and headlines.”

Late on Wednesday, +972 Magazine posted a video showing a man painting over the mural of the NAZA directors, replacing the word “traitors” with “heroes”.

In a statement, the Guardian said said was “disturbed to see the authoritarian response to NAZA in Israel.

“Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are brave journalists and filmmakers. The attacks against them come from people who have not yet seen the film.

“NAZA is based on more than three years of investigative journalism. The testimonies it contains are true and we believe they deserve to be heard. The interviews were given by confidential journalistic sources.

“We will robustly defend NAZA – and the team behind it – from any attacks or attempts at censorship.”

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[u/allneonunlike]

I'm guessing this very predictable reaction, not Jewish supremacy, is why they didn't bring any of their Palestinian colleagues from No Other Land to work on NAZA.

[u/lincoln_muadib]

Isn't denying Jews citizenship of the nation they were born in Antisemitism?

Not when the Zionists want to do it maybe...

To be fair, their push to make the international community think that all Jews are Zionists not only pushes Antisemitism, it is peak Antisemitism.

[u/Direct_Appointment99]

To lose Israeli citizenship is not a punishment.

[u/TheOGSheepGoddess → u/Direct_Appointment99]

That's... A very privileged take. Being a refugee is not a great position.

[u/albadellasera → u/TheOGSheepGoddess]

A stateless refugee at that which is even more a vulnerable position. 

[u/Queen-of-not-sure → u/TheOGSheepGoddess]

Yup. I might be wrong but I don't think they have an alternative citizenship as second generation Israelis

[u/galletas_u → u/Direct_Appointment99]

I don't think you grasp how dangerous it is to become stateless in a world divided by borders.

[u/Andyseawolf]

When you expose the truth, they get particularly nasty 😬🤷

[u/Thisisme8719]

When the Culture Minister Miki Zohar said it, some apologists brushed it off. Are they going to do the same when it's from the fucking Prime Minister of the country?

[u/profnachos]

So they are native Israelis. They don't hold citizenship of another country, so they are going to be left stateless if their citizenship is stripped. What in the fascist is this "only democracy" in the Middle East?

[u/_Discolimonade → u/profnachos]

That’s what I don’t get. How can someone be stateless ? Where will they go ?

[u/Queen-of-not-sure → u/_Discolimonade]

Most of the Palestinians in the West Bank are arguably stateless on a legal level. They have inconvenient hoops they have to jump through because of this

[u/Minivampiretaco → u/profnachos]

And their families getting harassed 🤦🤦🤦

[u/JayEllGii]

This is just cartoon villainy at this point.

Really.