The film-makers behind NAZA, the award-winning documentary on Israel’s systemic mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, defended their findings at the film’s North American premiere in New York on Saturday, amid protests in Israel and escalating threats from Israeli officials to strip them of their citizenship.

The critically acclaimed film, directed by Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, features the testimony of 24 anonymized Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers involved in the surveillance and remote killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who describe the AI-powered systems used to select their targets. The project takes its name from an acronym used euphemistically by Israeli intelligence to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike, which are often conducted at night in private homes, killing many family members, including children, at once.

“Our country is doing so much to hide these systems,” Szor told the audience at the New York film festival in a Q&A that followed the film’s premiere. “It’s not a world that is open even to the Israeli public.”

“These crimes that you saw are ongoing,” Abraham said. “They’re ongoing because it’s what our country is doing, and because of what your country is supporting and funding.” The 80-minute documentary, filmed in secret on rooftops in Tel Aviv, builds on reporting published from 2023 to 2025 in the Guardian; +972 Magazine, an Israeli-Palestinian publication; and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. It held its world premiere earlier this month at the Venice film festival, where it received a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record – and went on to win the special jury prize.

The film has been met with fierce derision from Israeli officials as well as threats to the film-makers, amid a tense election season largely focused on Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians to date and has been declared a genocide by numerous international agencies, including the United Nations.

A couple dozen protesters gathered outside the film’s premiere at the Lincoln Center on Saturday afternoon, brandishing Israeli flags and signs calling for viewers to “learn the facts” of the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians. At least one truck with LED screens accusing NAZA of being “propaganda dressed up as a documentary” circled the theater.

NAZA’s New York City premiere came just a day after the Israeli prime minister offered an aggressive defense of Israel’s use of deadly force in Gaza just across Central Park to the UN general assembly. As hundreds of protesters gathered outside and dozens of diplomats inside walked out in solidarity with Palestinians, Netanyahu called Israel’s war in Gaza the “opposite of genocide” and denounced Israel’s critics. Netanyahu had previously said he would seek new laws to strip citizenship from people who “smear” Israeli soldiers in response to NAZA.

“So, to all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York, I say this: shame on you!” he said Thursday.

On Friday, Netanyahu reiterated his plan to advance legislation revoking the citizenship of Abraham and Szor, two of the four film-makers behind No Other Land, an unstinting look at the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 2025. In an interview with the conservative Israeli outlet Makor Rishon, he likened NAZA to “launching dozens of ballistic missiles” at Israel.

Abraham addressed the missile comment directly in the post-screening Q&A, referring to such a characterization as “the criminalization of journalism and of this kind of work”.

He also defended the film’s use of anonymous sources as necessary to expose systems of mass killing hidden by the Israeli state. “Throughout the history of investigative journalism, very often granting confidentiality to sources is a means to pursue the truth,” he said. “This film could not have been made any other way and because the crimes are ongoing, we felt that it was important to make it.” Along with Netanyahu, Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, has called for the film-makers’ citizenship to be revoked, and accused them of “treason against the state”. The IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, said the military would “not allow IDF soldiers to be made targets through lies and blood libels” and would use “every tool at our disposal” against the film.

Rightwing activists have gone even further, calling for violence against the pair. Earlier this month, dozens of agitators surrounded Szor’s parents’ home in central Israel, with one protester calling for the “death penalty for traitors”.

More than 1,500 Israeli film professionals, 43 Israeli human rights organizations and the directors of major international festivals have defended Abraham and Szor, as have numerous international press freedom organizations. The film is currently set for release next month in cinemas in 55 countries, before a digital global release, for free, on the Guardian’s website in November, as part of the organization’s commitment to the dissemination of independent journalism.

But the US premiere Saturday held particular resonance, given the country’s annual $3.8bn in military assistance to Israel – a connection the film-makers noted to the New York City crowd.

“These soldiers are talking about what has been done with the taxpayer money of the people sitting here,” said Abraham.

He also responded to the protesters outside the theater invoking the attacks of October 7. “It’s in the film and it’s completely unjustified,” he said of the massacre, which killed 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians. “But it also cannot justify what you’ve seen in the film. It doesn’t justify the slaughter of so many civilians in Gaza.”

“I don’t want to live in a world where rightful empathy to Israeli victims is weaponized by leaders like Netanyahu – cynical people who promise nothing other than perpetual occupation and war,” he added. “It’s weaponized to mean a lack of empathy to Palestinians, to mean this continuous killing and murder of people. I don’t think we should want to live in such a world. I think we should all refuse to play this zero-sum game.”