AI Assisted Genocide

Naza (2026) - Abraham, Szor Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors credited for 2024's Oscar winning documentary No Other Land, about Israel settler’s government sponsored landgrabbing and daily violence in the West Bank in the Occupied Territories, come with a new documentary Naza, about systematic destruction and genocide happening in Gaza. I say genocide here, because one of the subjects in the film matter-of-factly admits it is.

Naza is a shorthand for Nazek Agavi, ‘Collateral Damage’ in Hebrew. Just like No Other Land, there is a controversy brewing, as the film does its festival runs - first Venice Film Festival where it won Special Jury Prize, and now here at New York. Netanyahu's government is threatening to revoke Abraham and Szor's Israeli citizenship and publicly marking them as traitors and enemies of the state even before the film’s general release. All I can say is, see it for yourself when it comes out. The Guardian, a British publication produced it (with Jonathan Glazer serving as executive producer). The filmmakers are self-distributing it with the help of MK2, a French company.

Naza consists of 24 interviews conducted by Abraham as an interviewer and Szor at the camera. The interviewees, all former and active Israeli military personnel, mostly intelligence officers who were engaged in the destruction of Gaza, in retaliation of the October 7th surprise Hamas attack that resulted in the death of 1,200 Israeli partygoers in a music festival in northern Gaza in 2023.

The interviews are conducted at night on the rooftop of downtown Tel Aviv, with interviewees backlit against blinking lights of shiny skyscrapers and their faces hidden in shadows and some of their voices altered, for protecting their identities from retaliation.

The filmmakers give a little bit of a background about Gazan history of building communication lines by the Israeli government. In fact, all communications in Gaza- if you have a cell phone, you will be intercepted and eavesdropped; that Israel has a total and complete control over the airwaves. But then, this prelude poses an uncomfortable question - how did Hamas manage such a large scale surprise attack? One of the interviewees admits that Hamas really outsmarted everyone, somehow.

The interviews make it quite clear that they knew collateral damage was unavoidable while leveling Gaza, which killed approximately 73,000 Palestinians so far and ongoing, majority of them women and children. More shockingly, it turns out Gaza happens to be the first genocide assisted by AI. AI interprets that the acceptable ratio for collateral damage is 20 to 1, meaning it is OK to order an airstrike or drone bombing wherever suspects are at, regardless if they are in a crowded place or alone.

It is mind boggling as these interviewees speak so matter-of-factly of these AI assisted decisions. They even mention a Hollywood movie such as Eye in the Sky, about a morally conflicted drone operator in Kenya, as if it was their ethics training video. Many of these whistle blower interviews are truly revealing and disturbing, as Abraham pushes them to answer his questions - Did you make those decisions in retaliation against what happened on October 7? Was it pure hatred that they were all enemies and deserved to be killed? Many answers coolly with a hint of irony - we are there to achieve military objectives. The order comes from the top and we follow it. It's like videogames. We do our job. They knew there were women and children.

Because Israelis have complete control, they could monitor everything that has been happening in Gaza. Some walked away after seeing dogs eating piles of corpses on the streets, some are still serving. All these interviews are intercut from time to time to show daily lives of inhabitants of Tel Aviv observed from the rooftop at night - doing chores in their apartments, walking on the promenade along the water, eating and doing ordinary activities, while talking candidly about despicable nature of what has been unfolding in the ‘war on Gaza’.

Abrams and Szor are journalists and activists. They did not go to film school and do not possess narrative storytelling skills. In No Other Land, narrative came naturally; we witnessed a friendship between Abraham and Basel Adra, one of the co-directors and the subject, a Palestinian activist, forming as they spent time together as the world around them fell apart.

In Naza, you don’t need such narrative. This atrocity doesn’t need to be narrativized. It’s a visual record of the war crimes being committed aided by AI technology. The chilling last minute footage of a collapsed building with the entire family’s feet sticking out of the concrete wall is a good reminder that once we delegate our moral obligation to AI, we’ve already lost whatever we are fighting for.

Living Under Occupation

No Other Land (2024) - Adra, Ballal, Abraham, Szor As I write this non-review-review of a documentary on the West Bank in the Occupied Territories, Israel is engaging in military conflicts with Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen. Iran just launched retaliatory bombing of the airbase in Israel.

Going through what's been happening for the past year is going to be futile because it will need detailed context with how we got here; on the verge of World War III, it would take way too long. As I cover New York Film Festival, which this film is part of, there's a boycott happening against the event because many of the sponsors have been deemed to be pro-Israel donors.

I say this is not a movie review because I'm about to lay down what happens in this very personal documentary and explain what it means at this time and place in the world, not as much about how the film was made and put together. This article is from the perspective of a person living in New York, married to a woman of Jewish descent: this is how I see it from my perspective and no one else's. So please keep that in mind as you read along.

No Other Land, a documentary by a group of Palestinian and Israeli activists, shows what it's like to be living under an apartheid state, in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. Five years in the making, it documents the ongoing destruction in Masafer Yatta, an area consisting of a small group of Palestinian villages in the South of the West Bank. It focuses on Basel Adra, a young activist (serving as one of the directors of the film) who grew up in the village and has been documenting Israeli incursions since he was a child.

He meets Israeli journalist Yuval (Yuval Abraham who is also credited as a director) in 2019, covering land siege and demolition of the Palestinian inhabitants’ brick and mortar homes on the dry hills by Israeli military, which cites the Israeli Supreme Court ruling that Israel has the right to the land in the Occupied Territories as a justification, to build a military training ground. Confrontations ensue.

But it's been like this forever. Basel's dad has been arrested many times in the past. The homes get destroyed, then rebuilt (with great difficulty I might add), destroyed and rebuilt.

They live in constant fear of being evicted or being arrested. The military cuts their water lines, confiscates their generators, and pours cement into the wells; all these actions are documented by Basel and others. Basel, along with his father, are known to the Israeli military officers as troublemakers. They are constant targets for harassment and threats.

Yuval is rightfully enraged by all of the things he sees, done by the Israeli military, by his name. He is an Israeli. At the end of the day, he gets to go home by breezing through checkpoints, using the Israeli citizen only lanes. He gets to shower and sleep in a cushy bed.

On the other hand Basel, about the same age as him, with a law degree, can't get a job, other than jobs doing manual labor. He needs to tend the gas station when his father gets arrested for protesting, since that's the sole source for the family income.

Yet, it's Basel who comforts Yuval, who tells him to calm down. "You are too enthusiastic. You want to see the change overnight, it won't come tomorrow." After years of living under occupation, people in the Occupied Territories become realists.

The network of resistance is done via phone; neighbors communicate that there's a raid or bulldozers coming to this town or that house, as the military seemingly selects their targets at random. They mobilize to stage a demonstration.

A neighbor gets shot while being evicted from their house. He is paralyzed from the shoulders down. They can’t afford to stay in the hospital. Their home destroyed, they move into the cave (the region is known for its natural caves).

With a small camera, Basel records everything. He uploads it to the web and hopes to get the words out of the struggle. That's all he does, constantly looking at the phone. Hey, two thousand people liked my post.

Their activism sometimes bore fruit and gave a moment of reprieve, like that time Tony Blair toured the region and saw their situation first-hand. And the Israelis backed down their expansion temporarily. Basel's father has a picture with him to prove it.

When they are chilling at night, sharing hookah, the conversation leads to other things between two men. "Do you see yourself having a family?" Yuval asks. Basel hesitates to answer. He is too tired. The years of struggle weighs him down. He is married to his phone, always looking at the likes and responses to his posts about the daily lives of his struggle and the news. He is tired. There's nothing else he can do.

Dominating the Middle East news cycle for a year has been the ongoing indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza since October 7th of 2023 by Israel, in retaliation of the surprise attack from the Hamas militants in Gaza Strip. This emboldened the zionist Israeli settler movement in the West Bank.

Accompanied by Israeli soldiers, the settlers start violently attacking the homes in Masafer Yatta. Basel records his cousin getting shot by a settler. His father gets arrested. The movie ends in early 2024. Basel and thousands of other stories like his still go on. People's suffering is staggering; so is their resilience.

Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor capture what it's like living under the occupation, that is so immediate and telling. The systematic injustice and oppression are well documented in No Other Land. Everything we take for granted, such as a roof over our heads, running water, and electricity, is in constant threat. The scarcity of economic opportunities, healthcare plus the restrictions of movement, makes the everyday life of people in the West Bank extremely challenging.

Social media serves a very different purpose in the Occupied Territories. Palestinians really count on getting the footage out to the world to show what’s really going on. I had no idea how much they depend on the pressure tactics by us on politicians to improve their lives.

It seems no distributor is picking up this film because of its 'sensitive' nature and fear of offending the Israeli government and its powerful lobby groups, even though No Other Land won the awards at this year’s Berlinale. But injustice is injustice. These people in the film are not actors. The oppression is real. The racist vitriol is real. And I feel it is our (people who've seen the film) duty, to advocate for their plight.