Israel cannot edit its crimes out of history

According to “Middle East Eye” (https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-embassies-uk-us-promote-copycat-naza-weeks-after-originals-venice-triumph), Israeli embassies in Britain and the United States are promoting a rival to NAZA to challenge allegations of genocide in Gaza. It even borrows the name: “NAZA: The Real Story” (https://nazadocumentary.com/).

The arrogance is staggering. A state confronted with evidence of its own crimes mobilises its diplomatic machinery to sell the world a more flattering version. As though Palestinian lives could be buried a second time, beneath a better communications campaign.

The original “NAZA, by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor” (https://www.theguardian.com/film/naza), brings forward testimony from Israeli military insiders. But the evidence extends far beyond one film. “Amnesty International’s investigation” (https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/) documented civilian killings, destruction, forced displacement and the denial of essential supplies, concluding that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

What disgusts me is the assumption behind this exercise: that enough messaging can make the world look away. That the destruction of Palestinian life can somehow become a matter of choosing which trailer you prefer.

A counter-documentary must answer the evidence. Borrowing a title and obtaining embassy endorsements proves nothing. Neither does putting military officials in front of a camera to explain themselves absolve them of responsibility.

And alongside this campaign comes the branding of the filmmakers as traitors. “El País reports” (https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-09-27/the-suffocation-of-israeli-filmmakers-critical-culture-is-now-regarded-as-an-act-of-treason.html) that Culture Minister Miki Zohar called Abraham and Szor traitors and demanded that their citizenship be revoked. Filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks described the threats against them: “People are calling for them to be hanged, for them to be killed.”

Calling for filmmakers to hang because they expose your country’s violence is barbaric. A minister branding them traitors helps create a climate in which persecution can pass for patriotism. The message reaches every journalist, artist and witness: speak, and you too could become a target.

The historical parallel with Nazi Germany lies in this treatment of dissent as betrayal. The “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents” (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-press-in-the-third-reich) how the Nazi regime crushed independent newspapers, drove journalists into exile and used imprisonment and concentration camps against those deemed to be harming Germany. That history shows where the demand for absolute national loyalty can lead when exposing wrongdoing becomes an offence against the nation.

More than 200 Israeli filmmakers have expressed solidarity with Abraham and Szor. Their resistance matters. So does recognising the authoritarian logic of those threatening them: protect the state’s reputation, punish the people who expose its violence, and teach everyone else to stay silent.

Israel’s reckless violence and its government’s arrogant denialism belong in the same historical record. Every effort to sanitise that record deserves scrutiny, especially when it carries the authority of a state.

No film will bring back the dead. No publicity campaign will undo the destruction. No counter-documentary will erase the crimes or cancel the demand for accountability.

Watch the “original NAZA trailer” (https://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2026/sep/25/naza-official-trailer). Read the evidence. Refuse the invitation to forget.