Two Israeli works reached global audiences within days of one another, both forged in the aftermath of October 7. Yet they offer strikingly different frameworks for reckoning with Israel’s recent history. The fifth season of Fauda, now streaming worldwide, turns the lens inward, compelling its Israeli characters to reckon with the personal cost of vengeance. NAZA, the Venice Special Jury Prize–winning documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, proceeds along a divergent path. Its central thesis appears predetermined before its evidence has been fully weighed.
Self-criticism has never been entirely foreign to Israeli culture; Fauda itself stands as evidence. For years, the series has portrayed Israeli operatives as courageous yet impulsive, traumatized, and at times profoundly mistaken. The latest season pushes further still. Its core subject is blood revenge, born from the October 7 massacre, and the narrative declines to frame revenge as catharsis. The characters pursue it, endure its consequences, and find it offers scant solace. Their anguish is genuine, but the series still invites viewers to deliberate over how to process it.
Trusting viewers enough to leave judgment unresolved
Serious art can lay bare wounds without insisting that a single moral account explains every decision taken under fire. It can confront Palestinian suffering, Israeli leadership failures, and the brutality wrought by war, all while preserving context, ambiguity, and human agency. Fauda has never insisted that every Israeli action is defensible. It trusts its audience enough to leave judgment open.
NAZA asks for a different kind of trust. The film centers on interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officials whose identities are withheld. They level grave allegations regarding targeting decisions in Gaza, including claims that mass civilian casualties were deliberately factored into military operations. These allegations merit examination. They also warrant extraordinary scrutiny. The IDF has categorically rejected them, asserting that the anonymous speakers’ identities and military positions cannot be verified.
Anonymity does not discredit testimony, particularly when whistleblowers face professional or legal reprisal. It does, however, impose a heavier burden on filmmakers advancing claims of extraordinary magnitude. Audiences cannot evaluate the sources’ rank, access to information, degree of direct involvement, or possible ulterior motives. When a documentary presents testimony under such conditions, its editorial framing becomes all the more significant. NAZA‘s public presentation conveys little sense that its central proposition remains a matter of dispute.
Elevating contested testimony to the status of verdict
The reception in Venice compounds that concern. NAZA earned a prolonged standing ovation and was awarded the Special Jury Prize on Saturday. Festival acclaim may signal emotional impact, artistic admiration, or political solidarity. It cannot corroborate an allegation. The danger, however, is that the prestige enveloping the film will lead audiences far removed from the operational realities of Gaza to treat disputed testimony as a conclusive judgment on Israeli conduct.
Abraham has already spoken in precisely such moral terms. Following the award, he referred to crimes committed by Israel and argued that external pressure would be necessary to secure accountability. Filmmakers are entitled to reach stern conclusions. Audiences are equally entitled to question whether the film rigorously tests those conclusions or primarily curates testimony that supports them. A documentary carrying accusations of systematic mass killing should invite scrutiny at least as rigorous as the scrutiny of Israel it so vigorously demands.
Culture Minister Miki Zohar’s threat to pursue revocation of the filmmakers’ citizenship does not sharpen that scrutiny. It weakens Israel’s position by substituting a factual contest with a loyalty test. The fitting response to disputed claims is to challenge methodology, expose omissions, publish evidence, and insist on precision. If the case presented in NAZA is deficient, those deficiencies should be demonstrated publicly. Israel gains nothing by transforming the filmmakers themselves into the focal point.
Fauda offers the more assured model. Its creators rewrote the season after October 7 because reality had outpaced the story they had originally intended to tell. They did not respond by portraying Israelis as paragons. They endowed their characters with grief, fury, helplessness, and a hunger for revenge — then allowed those impulses to carry weight. The result is recognizably Israeli because it rejects the comfort of simplicity.
Israeli artists should hold their country accountable, particularly after a war that has left both Israelis and Palestinians bearing immense loss. The standard must remain intellectual honesty, even when it disturbs ideological ease. Fauda‘s power resides in asking what vengeance does to those who pursue it and allowing the answer to remain harrowing and unresolved. NAZA arrives with far more sweeping assertions and far less visible uncertainty. When art begins with a verdict, audiences ought to be especially wary before mistaking conviction for proof.
