A fresh political firestorm has erupted in Israel over an award-winning documentary that exposes Israel’s artificial intelligence-fueled campaign of mass civilian casualties in Gaza, after far-right Culture Minister Miki Zohar formally requested the country’s internal security service Shin Bet launch a full investigation into one of the film’s creators over unproven allegations of ties to the militant group Hamas.
Far-right Israeli outlet Channel 14 first broke the news of Zohar’s request on Monday, confirming that the minister had submitted an official letter to Shin Bet chief David Zini, a fellow far-right appointee. Along with the formal request, Zohar attached open-source research compiled by the Yesha Council, a powerful advocacy group representing Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, which outlines what the group claims are suspicious connections linking filmmaker and journalist Yuval Abraham, one of the lead directors of the documentary *NAZA*, to individuals with alleged Hamas affiliations.
In the letter, Zohar argued that the findings compiled by the settler organization are serious enough to warrant a deep, exhaustive review of Abraham’s professional and personal conduct. He wrote, “I hope the data and sources collected and provided by the Yesha Council will assist you and make it easier for professional bodies to examine these matters and deepen the inquiry I have requested.”
This request is not Zohar’s first attack on the *NAZA* team: last month, he first called for an official probe into how Abraham and the film’s co-creator Rachel Szor obtained access to sensitive Israeli military information for the project. The documentary itself features on-the-record testimony from 24 anonymous current and former Israeli military and intelligence insiders, who detail how AI systems underpin Israel’s targeting and bombing operations in Gaza that have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians to date, most of them women and children.
The controversy erupted immediately after *NAZA* took home the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival last month, sparking widespread condemnation and harassment of the film’s creators from across Israel’s right-wing political establishment, far-right media outlets, social media users, and street protesters. In one alarming incident last month, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the childhood home of Szor’s parents, calling for both Abraham and Szor to be publicly hanged for what they label as treason.
Following the win, both Zohar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went public with demands to revoke Abraham’s and Szor’s Israeli citizenship. Shortly after, Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir ordered military legal officials to pursue formal legal action against the documentary’s creators and the anonymous soldiers who agreed to testify for the film. Last week, as the film racked up more than €1.1 million in ticket sales during its theatrical run in Italy, the Israeli military released an official statement dismissing the work as “a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture” of its operations in Gaza.
According to Channel 14’s reporting, the Yesha Council’s research focuses on Abraham’s professional connections to two Palestinian public figures: Ahmed Alnaouq, a Gaza-born journalist based in the United Kingdom, and Ayman Gharib, a Palestinian human rights advocate working in the Jordan Valley region of the occupied West Bank. The settler group’s report claims both Alnaouq and Gharib have hidden ties to Hamas, though it has not publicly released verifiable evidence to support this allegation.
Speaking to Channel 14 on Monday, Zohar defended his request, saying he had approached the Shin Bet chief “so that he would immediately examine whether an act of treason, or an act on behalf of a terrorist organisation during wartime, was committed here.” The minister added that he expects the domestic security agency “to carry out a full and comprehensive inquiry, leaving no stone unturned, until the truth is clarified as soon as possible.”
The escalating crackdown on *NAZA* and its creators has drawn quiet concern from free speech advocates, who warn that the Israeli government’s aggressive response to the documentary sets a dangerous precedent for censorship of critical reporting on the country’s military campaign in Gaza, at a time when the war has already become a deeply polarizing issue within Israeli society.