Even before we saw "NAZA," the controversies surrounding the film had divided the Israeli public sphere into camps.
On the Right, it was immediately labeled as a "betrayal," another Israeli film that exports accusatory materials against Israel and hands them to the world. On the other side, within parts of the Left and the Center, the film was received as a necessary exposure of a truth the Israeli public refuses to know. Very quickly, the automatic, self-feeding binary structure formed again.
For the Right, the film itself confirms the feeling that Israel is being attacked and framed from the outside and the inside. For parts of the Left, the anger and the attempt to silence it confirm that Israeli society is in denial and is unwilling to see Palestinian suffering. Each side becomes proof of the other's rightness. In this tailspin, the question of governmental responsibility for October 7 is pushed aside, and the "betrayal" becomes a mutual accusation between the camps.
Within such a field, the divisions take root rapidly. These are victim and aggressor, patriot and traitor, human and monster. They reduce the possibility of seeing the other outside the role already assigned to them. Reality becomes flat and one-dimensional.
Another reaction was heard between the two poles, mostly with hesitation. This was not a refusal to see Gaza or a call to silence the film. Rather, it was an attempt to contain the catastrophe unfolding in the region and the missing context. That missing element is October 7, the hellish reality from which the soldiers went to war, and the environment in which they fought. It means seeing Gaza without turning Israelis into a uniform and murderous collective. It means recognizing the Israeli wound and the complexity of the war without negating the ability to see the Palestinians.
Following the Madrid train bombings in 2004, psychoanalyst Eric Laurent wrote about how a group that experienced terror can retreat into itself. It can experience the outside as hostile and dangerous. It can lose the ability to see differences between people outside of it. They become "them." After October 7, the Palestinian became Hamas, an enemy, a monster. After Gaza, the Israeli became a soldier, an occupier, a murderer. The subject dissolves into the category of innocent or enemy, victim or aggressor. Here, dehumanization begins. It happens not only when the other becomes a monster, but when the individual entirely becomes "them." The name "NAZA" also operates within this field.
"Naza," collateral damage, is written in Latin letters and carries an unmistakable undertone that is hard not to hear: NAZI. In a space saturated with monster imagery, absolute evil, and Holocaust comparisons, the name also has weight. The timing is not external to this field. We are approaching October 7, when for many, the wound is still alive in body and soul.
Both nations carry deep collective traumas in a reality that is not symmetrical and has real differences in power and responsibility. However, when the discourse shrinks to a division of victim and aggressor, we see in the other side only what fits its pre-assigned role. A discourse that seeks to expose dehumanization can also replicate the very erasure it seeks to fight.
A struggle over moral innocence takes place within this division. Victimhood grants innocence in advance. Evil, guilt, and responsibility remain outside, with the aggressor.
In a recent meeting with Israelis and Palestinians, I saw how the binary pattern reproduces itself even in a space that seeks to bring people together. The caution toward those perceived as victims can actually reduce them to this role. It can make it difficult for them to bring their full complexity, including contradictions and criticism of Hamas, and even silence voices that do not fit into this pattern.
The victim-aggressor pattern also divides us internally. It hardens positions and pushes different voices in Israeli society back into familiar camps. Within this field, efforts to connect also exist. These are connections between different voices in Israeli society, from Right and Left, between Jews and Arabs, and between Israelis and Palestinians. These spaces are fragile. They are sucked again and again into victim-aggressor patterns, the real work lies in breaking free from it. Only from within these cracks can new connections and possibilities emerge.
