Transcript
Naza which is this slang term that they use for collateral damage. You know you’re going to hear people say after seeing this film they’re going to be like see I told you it’s not a genocide. This film is actually the best evidence against genocide because in a genocide you don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. You don’t go to all this trouble. You just kill everyone. That’s your intention. Round them all up and kill them. Kill them all. That’s what genocide is. This entire effort, all of this elaborate stuff that Israel does to try to find a target and figure out who a target is. This proves, of course, that it’s not genocide. This can’t be genocide, right? And you’re going to hear people say that with a straight face. And to be honest, technically they might have a point. They might be right because genocide, as we sort of have, it’s become codified, requires this, you know, special intention. There could be no military targets down below or there can be, you know, no objectives other than just killing all of these people.
And you need this kind of special intention and to prove that it’s there to prove somebody or something is guilty of genocide. And if that’s true, it becomes really difficult to become guilty of this thing. And uh I was alerted to this also by Durk Moses. But in 1947 when this was starting to be sort of written down and and showing up in this way, the Dutch delegation to the United Nations noticed that this has a pretty big loophole, right? It’s really hard to be sort of found guilty of this thing. And they they pointed out saying, “Listen, you can engage in all kinds of actions that end up killing insane numbers of people, even the total population, and it will be excluded from this charge of genocide because of this special intent thing.” As long as you can sort of claim or say that you had an intended target down there that was a military objective and and you could sort of point to that, then you’re out of it. You know, you’re out of the guilty charge of genocide. And they say this is a camouflaged genocide. This is what they would propose, this concept of camouflaged genocide. And they said this should be elevated to be just as punishable. Now, it didn’t work. It didn’t get accepted. It’s, you know, it hasn’t been elevated in our our consciousness as a as a term or a concept of camouflage genocide. But that is precisely what you are seeing in the film Naza.
Now I will say there is one I heard at least one particular charge and walkthrough that would be very much obviously fall even under the difficult sort of label to reach of genocide which was this one soldier talking about demolishing of homes where they had a probability of how many people had evacuated or or actually left the building. And if it was down to just 25%, they would still level the building. Uh, which could have been up to 80 people in these larger highrises. And I think that one pretty much falls under the purview of genocide. It’s pretty hard to make a case that you had a military objective to level an entire building when 25% of the people were still in it. Especially that one, I feel like, okay, yeah, checks the box. obviously the highest level of genocide, but but but I don’t want to get hung up too much on the word because this camouflage genocide concept, I mean, why would you want to commit a camouflage genocide rather than just a regular genocide? Well, obviously you want to hide your intentions from the rest of the world because it’s uh you’ll be a pariah or you’ll get criticism or you’ll lose international legitimacy. There’s a lot of talk about this in the film as well. So, if you wanted to commit a camouflage genocide, you know, how would you do it? Brainstorm how you would do it. My argument is that is exactly what you see in Naza. This is if the Holocaust was the textbook case of genocide that you have to just compare everything to forever. Well, this is the textbook case of camouflage genocide. This is exactly how you do it. You go to all of these great lengths in order to try to prove that your intention was to kill someone with a target. We could again set aside whether any of them are legitimate targets or not. In fact, there’s a few instances in the film where they talk about we knew this guy wasn’t an operative for years, but target anyway, you know, it’s I mean, the system that’s they’re describing in it to fight out to try to identify and figure out who a target should be or could be is absurd and immoral on its face to begin with, but even just set this aside.
And so I I’ve called what Israel is doing the system of maximizing collateral damage. And there there’s one testimony and section in the film about who’s daddy. um the uh policy and AI system they were using to uh wait for targets of theirs to be at home in order to kill them along of course with everybody uh in the house and what that was about. And I think it’s really really damning on this topic. You know, you’ll you’ll hear some some soldiers talk about having a target who they could kill in the battlefield with a with a little bit of effort. And why why are they choosing to wait until he’s at home surrounded by his family in order to kill him? And they’ll tell you, well, it’s just easier when he’s there, presumably because he’s not moving around. He’s sleeping in his in a bed. He’s presumably, you know, you tracked his phone and everything’s still. You drop a bomb, you kill him, and of course everyone else around him. And it’s just easier where you could have targeted him and tried to kill him with just a little bit of effort. I’m sure they could have done it. Maybe two or three bombs rather than one bomb. Believe me, I think we can afford it um in the battlefield, but you’re choosing to wait until he gets home because it’s easier. And the the nasa, the collateral damage around him, that just doesn’t matter at all. Right? This is exactly what you would do in a camouflage genocide. You understand?
So when someone says, you know, it’s not a genocide because they could kill all the Gazans and they haven’t done it and it can’t be genocide and they can’t have the intention of genocide. I will say because they have the ability to eliminate their target with minimal or no collateral damage, but they choose a policy which increases or maximizes that collateral damage. You know for certain it’s a camouflage genocide. And I think the case is closed. But like I said, I think getting hung up on the terms too much is a bit of a mistake. But this is precisely what one would do if they wanted to pull it off. And I think the whole world is taking notes. Um, again, the the the laboratory is producing results in Gaza.
Okay. Another point on uh human shields and this moral and balance argument that I’ve heard uh kind of my whole life. And the argument would go something like, you know, there’s this moral imbalance and asymmetry here where the Hamas or Gazans would use human shields, you know, fire rocket launchers from the middle of schools or something, which by the way is refuted in the film, but let’s just say they do it, you know, if they use human shields, um, they’re doing it because it works, because they know the IDF or the Israelis, you know, will will see the moral dilemma and they won’t drop a bomb on the school just to get the rocket launcher. uh because you know they don’t want to kill those innocent civilians. Whereas if you imagine the reverse, meaning like if the IDF fires a missile from the middle of a kibbutz or something like that, you know, Hamas wouldn’t care. They’d be like, “Okay, cool. We’ll kill everybody in the kabbitz and the rocket launcher. There’s no such thing as human shields here.” And that reveals some kind of moral imbalance between these two parties. Everyone who’s ever made that argument before should be ashamed of themselves and embarrassed when they watch this film to hear that it is precisely wrong. Precisely wrong by their own telling that they are waiting for the target to be surrounded by human shields because it’s easier to kill the target there.
Now, I wish you could even go further in this kind of estimation of like, okay, if they’re in the battlefield taking a a smoke break or something like this and they’re stationary for five minutes, will you drop the bomb on them then? That seems like an easy one, an easy kill that wouldn’t also kill his family. Or will you wait till he goes home because that’s the policy and you’ve been told that’s the policy. Well, that’s the policy. So, off with that argument about moral inequivalency in human shields. It’s always been in this film really lights a fire to any of these people who’ve made this argument before. You know who you are.
Another quick one is the combatant civilian ratios one. Obviously watching the film. Um you know there’s not much more I need to say about all of the debates that I’ve been been in banging my head against the wall trying to get people not to repeat and believe Israeli and IDF lies about these kinds of things. Obviously you just watch the film and there’s .. really not even much to say about that. I don’t even know I have to even be mentioning it anymore if anybody still believes the IDF numbers on uh supposed combat and kill ratios and civilian ratios. Um yeah, I hear Hunter Biden has a meme coin he’s trying to sell you too.
But my biggest takeaway from the entire film is honestly the one that scares me the most cuz as I was watching it, I was thinking Israel will learn from this. you know, what they see and hear in these stories of these people um talking to this interviewer are all solvable kind of temporary unfortunate problems where there’s still too many humans with their pesky little moral emotions getting in the way who are sitting down to do interviews like this and obviously causing a PR problem for them. heard at least like five times where there was testimonies where I would thought like, okay, you know, this is going to be solved when Israel can just get or whoever can just get an algorithm to sit in the chair uh rather than a human. And at that point, I don’t know, maybe we as a species are just evaluating algorithms for killing people at the United Nations and fighting over different, you know, confidence and probability ratios and math problems that become internationally standardized or something. And Israel is leading the way on that charge towards that future. I mean, just the the technicalization of mass killing is and mass murder is just uh beyond chilling in this film. I think we’re at a real crossroads here as a species. And you know, this film is just an absolute nightmare revealed that we’re living through today. And you know, thank you, Israel, for so boldly leading the way and showing the world the the the true limits of indifference and supremacy and this techno dysstopia. You know, thank you so much for that. But I fear that it’s really just the beginning. It really is the laboratory for us. So go see the film if and when you can and watch it when it’s streaming, of course, uh and then raise some hell about it because this cannot be our future. And for Palestinians, it’s a disgrace that it has been and continues to be their present. So yeah, those are my thoughts
Tim’s Thoughts:
I’ve been interested how rhetoric can be used to “camouflage” objectionable policies. I saw it in my use of AI to analyze Israeli Hasbara (propaganda). Likewise, in Gaza it seems there is a rhetorical playbook to cover up any type of war crime in a way that is unfalsifiable. “The journalist was Hamas.” The hospital was located on a “Hamas command center” (disproven, but Palestinians were still unable to prevent their hospitals from being destroyed). The Palestinian adults were being used as “human shields” (but it is still illegal to kill human shields). I’ve heard Francesca Albanese mention the term “humanitarian camouflage”, which describes the way Israel uses humanitarian language to disguise war crimes:
Humanitarian Camouflage:
Disguising your murder attempts using humanitarian language
The world today is divided into two: those who believe Israel’s lies and those who do not. Some do not care, but let us set them aside. Since March 2024, when I presented the first of five reports produced during the genocide, I have described Israel’s use of what I call “humanitarian camouflage”—the deployment of humanitarian language to conceal crimes. Terms such as “collateral damage”, “safe zones”, “evacuation orders”, and “humanitarian assistance” have all been systematically misused. International humanitarian law, which imposes limits on the conduct of war—because even wars have rules, whatever Israel does or believes—has been turned on its head.
The principles of distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality of military action, military necessity, and precautions during military operations have all been exploded to justify killing and destroying everything in sight. The word “ceasefire” follows the same logic. It was introduced to quell the global popular protests against Israel and its allies—governments like yours and mine. Italy and India are among the most steadfast defenders of Israel at this tragic moment in history. In practice, “ceasefire” has meant: Israel fires, while the rest of the world ceases to pay attention.
“Today, the world is divided into two. Those who believe Israel’s lies and those who don’t: Francesca Albanese.” by Prathap Nair, Frontline, Apr 28, 2026.
Subverting Humanitarian law:
Not long before the current assault on Gaza, during Israel’s 2021 attacks which resulted in the killing of 66 Palestinian children and injuries of 600 more, Israeli military legal experts publicly proposed that, when “considering the military advantage gained by eliminating senior terrorists, it is irrelevant to ask how many children were incidentally killed.”56 In this rationale, IHL proportionality is reinterpreted to render the conscious killing of children, regardless of the number, as irrelevant when targeting suspected ‘terrorists.’ According to this subculture of disproportion, no amount of foreseeable mass killing of Palestinian children in attacks can be deemed anything other than incidental, proportionate, and inherently lawful. 57.
Humanitarian Camouflage: Israel Rewrites the Laws of War to Legitimize Genocide in Gaza, Institute for Palestine Studies, Luigi Daniele, Nicola Perugini, Francesca Albanese, Sept 26, 2024.
NAZA vs the Hannibal Directive
Drone footage released by the Israeli military last month shows the extent of the destruction of the cars fleeing the Supernova rave on 7 October, likely inflicted by Israeli drones and helicopters. (Electronic Intifata / Israeli military)
I see an interesting parallel between Palestinian NAZA (collateral damage) and the Israeli Hannibal directive (Haaretz/paywall), under which on October 7 Israeli military Apache helicopters fired hellfire missiles at the Palestinian militants’ vehicles transporting Israeli hostages to Gaza. Under the Hannibal directive, Israeli soldiers must prevent other Israelis from being taken hostage at all costs. In theory this means undertaking risky shots at Gazan militants that may result in killing the Israeli captive as “collatoral damage” (NAZA). In practice, this can mean killing the Israeli captive (collateral damage) to prevent them from becoming a long-term hostage.
Officially, the Israeli was collateral damage of the Apache Hellfire missile aimed at their captor’s car. Unofficially, the helicopter pilots were also trying to kill the Israeli captives, just as unofficially the Israelis were trying to maximize the number of Palestinian family members as “collateral damage.”