The Israeli co-director of a documentary alleging that mass civilian deaths were routinely built into the IDF’s targeting decisions during the Gaza war defended the film’s claims and its framing in his first Hebrew media interview since winning a top award at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend.

In the Monday Channel 13 interview, which frequently turned tense, journalist Raviv Drucker repeatedly casted doubt on how Yuval Abraham and co-director Rachel Szor could have verified the film’s allegations, made by 24 anonymous IDF Intelligence Corps soldiers.

Drucker is one of the few Israelis to have seen the film in its entirety, as it has not yet been made publicly available.

The Channel 13 journalist expressed particular skepticism regarding allegations that the IDF approved strikes it knew would kill hundreds of civilians or that the IDF approved strikes that would have killed hundreds of civilians who did not heed evacuation warnings — even in the absence of a Hamas target.

Drucker said that on multiple occasions, when he would report on soldiers’ testimonies, he found himself unable to verify them or discovered they were inaccurate.

Abraham responded that the allegations in the film were verified, noting that he produced the documentary in partnership with the British publication, “The Guardian,” and that the film’s creators had to take steps to protect the identities of the soldiers.

“This is a Guardian film, made in cooperation with a leading publication, with a staff of editors who had access to the raw materials,” Abraham said. “The identities of the people were verified, the cases they discussed were verified.”

The Guardian issued its own statement on Monday slamming the Israel government’s response to the film as “authoritarian,” praising the NAZA directors and pledging to defend the film from “any attacks or attempts at censorship.”

Asked during the Channel 13 interview why the film did not spend more time on the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that launched the war, or the mistreatment of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza, Abraham responded that it did include those topics, and repeatedly challenged Drucker to do more investigative journalism about the war’s civilian toll in the Strip.

“Why didn’t you broadcast?” Abraham asked Drucker. “Three years in the [Israeli TV news] investigative programs, there wasn’t even one item, if I’m not mistaken, that dealt with the rules of engagement in Gaza, that dealt with the collateral damage policy, that researched in-depth the damage to innocent Palestinians’ lives in the Strip.”

“You say [our film] wasn’t complex enough. Okay. So why didn’t you broadcast something complex yourself?” Abraham asked, without getting an answer from Drucker.

Over 73,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’s........

© The Times of Israel