‘NAZA’, the film that has generated both international acclaim and a ferocious backlash, opens in the UK today. The documentary about Israel’s slaughter in Gaza features interviews with 24 anonymous Israeli intelligence and military officers. They describe the chilling calculations behind the catastrophic bombing campaigns in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of over 74,000 Palestinians, including at least 21,000 children. In Israel itself, where the film has yet to be screened, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to strip NAZA’s Israeli directors of their citizenship, and the directors have also faced death threats and vitriolic protests outside their family homes.
At its core, ‘NAZA’ investigates the very concept of collateral damage as interpreted by Israel’s military. NAZA is the Hebrew acronym for collateral damage, itself a horrendously anodyne term to describe the killing of innocents by militaries everywhere. Collateral damage means unintended or incidental deaths or damage caused by military action. It is often referred to as NCV (non-combatant casualty value) – another acronym that hides the human lives about which these deadly calculations are made. Collateral damage is an anticipated cost of war, factored into assessments of whether attacks on a “target” can be justified under international law.
Humanitarian laws around this aspect of war became part of the Geneva Conventions through Additional Protocol I, adopted in 1977. It acts against attacks expected to cause civilian death, injury or damage to civilian objects that would be “excessive” in relation to the military gain. What counts as excessive is, of course, open to interpretation – so who decides? And how?