Naza: a reaction from Peter Beinart – who has seen the film!

JVL Introduction

Peter Beinart has seen the film “Naza” directed by Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham; a film that won an award and a lengthy standing ovation in Venice and threats to lose their citizenship and even death threats from their own country, Israel.

Here Peter addresses with regret the fact that Palestinians continue to be largely denied the right to narrate their own experience, their own genocide; that they are not given the space and attention that, eg this film, statements by people like Macklemore get.  This makes it even more incumbent on those of us who are more likely to get heard to use our voices while also trying to elevate the voices of Palestinians at every turn.

This film argues Beinart could only have been made by Israelis. Here they interview 24 members of the Israeli military about what they did and the system within which they operated.  One of many things that were clear for Beinart from seeing the film is that civilian deaths are not in any way “unavoidable collateral damage” but are an essential part of the system and the “human shield” argument does not carry water when a whole AI programme was developed to target Hamas militant once they had returned home so killing their entire family (The “Where’s Daddy?” programme)  He make the point that every building in Israel will also have people who have been in the IDF  – should they and their whole families also be targeted?

There are also important points about liberal zionists and how the genocide cannot all be laid on the door of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir.

There is a video in the original post and below we publish the transcript.

This article was originally published by The Beinart Notebook on Sun 20 Sep 2026. Read the original here.