Naza: The Real Story, a Film Built From IDF Officers’ Accounts
Naza: The Real Story is an Israeli documentary of IDF officers’ Gaza accounts. What it claims, who made it, a rival film, and UN and rights findings.
October 4, 2026 — Night over Tel Aviv, city lights beyond a rooftop parapet, and commanders who say they ran operations in Gaza telling it in their own words. That is the premise of Naza: The Real Story, a 2026 Israeli documentary that its website dates September 20, 2026 and offers with English subtitles. The site’s tagline reads, verbatim: “Rooftops. Night. Commanders telling it as they lived it.” (nazadocumentary.com) It is free to watch, and we encourage readers to see it and judge for themselves.
Editor’s note: Peter’s World has not verified the claims made in the film. Everything in it is the account of its interviewees and the filmmakers’ framing. We report those claims as claims. The film is also a response to a different, award-winning film with a near-identical title; see “Context and other findings” below.
What the film covers
According to the film’s website, Naza: The Real Story (Hebrew title נז״א: הסיפור האמיתי) is built from interviews with senior IDF commanders, intelligence officers and soldiers. The site says it was made with their cooperation and that the interviews are spoken in Hebrew, with English subtitles built into the picture. It lists a running time of 49:02 on the player; the site’s FAQ gives 48 minutes 47 seconds.
The site says the interviewees argue the following. These are their claims, not findings:
- Hamas fighters wore civilian clothes and moved between buildings like civilians, which they say made armed people hard to identify.
- Weapons and tunnel shafts were placed inside homes, including, one interviewee says, a children’s room, and near schools, mosques and a hospital. The site names Shifa hospital.
- The IDF operated under rules for opening fire that, they say, required approval by rank, treated unarmed people as non-targets and held fire when in doubt.
- Hostages were held inside civilian homes, which they say shaped operations.
- Hamas took over humanitarian convoys, in the interviewees’ telling, and the IDF coordinated aid and medicine, including medicine for hostages.
The site says the film shows photos, footage and documents, which it says were cleared for publication. We have not been able to assess that material. The interviewees are not named on the site’s blog posts, which describe them by role only.
Who made it
Verified from the site’s creators page: the film is credited to Roi Danino, Ariel Averbuch and Hagay Gutman. The site describes Danino as an entrepreneur and IDF reserve lieutenant colonel, Averbuch as an attorney, IDF reserve major and chairman of Sword of Gideon, an organization that says it combats antisemitism, and Gutman as a television director and editor. The site describes the film as presenting “the Israeli perspective” on the war.
The site’s legal notice names its operator as Three Musketeers Production, “a company in formation,” with no registered address yet. The site does not say who financed or distributes the film. Peter’s World found no disclosure of funding elsewhere. Israeli outlets i24NEWS and Ice reported that other people involved are not being named, for security reasons. The Embassy of Israel to the USA account posted about the film on October 3, according to IBTimes UK. We have not seen a statement on whether any government body played a role in making it.
How to watch
The film streams free, with no account, at nazadocumentary.com/film, in qualities from 360p to 1080p. The site’s terms allow linking to it but not downloading, embedding or re-uploading. The site says the film is not on other streaming services, and that any new release venue would be announced on its X account, @nazadocumentary.
Context and other findings
A response to another film. NAZA, directed by Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian and JW Films, premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. It draws on 24 anonymous Israeli military and intelligence personnel, who describe how civilian casualty estimates were used in strikes, according to JTA. “Naza” is a Hebrew acronym for collateral damage. The Jerusalem Post, citing Maariv, reported that The Real Story was made as an explicit rebuttal. IBTimes UK noted that critics on social media questioned whether the shared title could divert viewers searching for the original, and that it found no public explanation from the makers. The IDF’s October 1 response calls the original “distorted, misleading” and criticizes its reliance on anonymous testimony. The filmmakers and the Guardian reject that criticism, according to JTA.
UN findings. On September 16, 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel rejects the finding, and no court has ruled on it; our earlier investigation and opinion piece examine the report and its critics. In an earlier report (June 2024), the commission found that Hamas and other armed groups committed war crimes on October 7 and that Israeli forces committed war crimes in Gaza. On the film’s central theme, it said it was still investigating reports that armed groups operate from civilian locations, could not verify the evidence Israel presented, and made no finding on human shields, according to an Atlantic Council analysis. Israel did not answer the commission’s six requests for information and access for that report.
Hospitals. Human Rights Watch said in March 2025 that Israeli forces’ conduct while occupying hospitals, including Shifa, amounted to war crimes. It also set out Israel’s allegations that armed groups used Shifa as a headquarters, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s denial that they fought inside. HRW said no patients or medical staff it interviewed saw fighters inside the compound. Israel says Hamas “systematically and extensively embedded” military assets in civilian areas, including hospitals, schools and mosques, and that this explains the civilian toll.
Aid. The IDF and the film’s interviewees say Hamas diverted aid. The UN’s humanitarian office disagrees on scale. In a May 2025 briefing, OCHA’s Jonathan Whittall said the UN had no evidence that aid coordinated through credible humanitarian channels was diverted, attributed theft to criminal gangs, and blamed Israeli restrictions for shortages. Israel rejects that account. A blog post on the film’s site cites a 2009 UNRWA suspension of imports after supplies were seized in Gaza, which UNRWA attributed to Gaza’s Hamas-run government; Hamas officials described the incidents as a mistake.
Analysis: The two films are rival accounts built on testimony that outsiders cannot yet check. The IDF faulted NAZA because its sources are anonymous; the interviewees in The Real Story are also unnamed on its site. That is not proof either account is wrong. It means viewers should ask the same questions of both: who is speaking, what was their role, and what documentation is shown on screen.
Watch the film, read the context, and decide. If you find an error in this article, tell us and we will correct it.
Sources
- Naza: The Real Story — The film (official site)
- Naza: The Real Story — Meet the creators (official site)
- JTA: IDF claims ‘fundamental errors’ in NAZA documentary (Oct 1, 2026)
- OHCHR: Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds (Sept 16, 2025)
