Netanyahu Orders Criminal Probe of Soldiers Who Testified in Gaza Documentary 'NAZA'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a formal letter ordering Israel's military chief, the head of Shin Bet and the attorney general to open a criminal investigation into the soldiers who gave anonymous interviews for the documentary "NAZA," according to Haaretz reporting cited by Consortium News columnist Caitlin Johnstone.

The film draws on testimony from 24 soldiers, serving and discharged members of Unit 8200, Israel's signals-intelligence corps, who described their experiences during the Gaza war. "NAZA," directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 13.

Netanyahu's letter accuses those involved of what Haaretz quotes as "serious information security offenses, criminal defamation and harm to Israel's diplomatic and security interests." The letter further states there is "concern that those involved in the defamatory film committed serious criminal offenses by exposing highly classified information and creating a breach in the information security of a highly sensitive intelligence unit."

"There is concern that those involved in the defamatory film committed serious criminal offenses by exposing highly classified information and creating a breach in the information security of a highly sensitive intelligence unit," Netanyahu's letter states, as quoted by Haaretz.

The two accusations sit uneasily together. Defamation requires falsehood; exposure of classified material requires that the underlying account be accurate. Netanyahu's own letter alleges both, without resolving the contradiction, according to the reporting cited by Johnstone. Middle East Eye editor Muhammad Shehada noted on social media that the letter marks a shift from Israel's earlier public characterization of the film as a "hoax" to an acknowledgment, in a formal government document, that the soldiers' accounts contained material the state considers classified.

The account of Netanyahu's letter and its contents is drawn from Haaretz's reporting and from the letter itself as described in that reporting; Occupation Watch has not independently reviewed the document. The substance of what the 24 soldiers told filmmakers, and whether any of it constitutes a war crime or simply an internal account of combat operations, is not established by the record reviewed here. What is established is that Israel's prime minister has moved to criminalize the act of soldiers describing their own conduct in Gaza to journalists, rather than to investigate the conduct itself.

Israel has separately restricted foreign press access to Gaza throughout the war and has faced documented criticism, cited in the broader record, over the killing of Palestinian journalists during the campaign. The NAZA investigation adds a domestic dimension: soldiers facing prosecution not for what they did in Gaza, but for telling an interviewer what they did.