NAZA is maybe the most awful thing I've ever seen. And I want to add “(Complimentary)” after that, because I think it’s an exceptional piece of documentary work… but doing so would feel crass in a way that I can’t shake.

A few years ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I watched the footage that followed liberation in German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. It was harrowing. Those are images I cannot unsee, realities about the human body I cannot unknow.

But as awful as it is, there's a sort of remove, I think, that comes with the “factual”ness of it. It was captured to ensure no one would question the reality of what had occurred there.

But I think it's telling that the most enduring film about the Holocaust is one that does not feature footage from it: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.

I haven't watched Shoah because I've never been in a place where I felt like I could watch 9-and-a-half hours of interviews with people in and around the camps. I imagine the experience is quite a bit like watching NAZA 8 times in a row.

It's a film made up of interviews from 24 people whose culpability in the Gazan genocide range from spying on its inhabitants to burning their homes to the ground. From the few who estimate their numbers, one can reasonably assume they are collectively, directly responsible for at least ten thousand civilian deaths.

And a lot of them are totally fine with that.

I did not learn anything from NAZA other than what its turned means: Collateral Damage. Civilians who will die in the attack.

For every military target, there is an associated NAZA that is deemed “acceptable.” The baseline is seemingly ~20 but could go as high as 500.

And the software that determined the strikes, using machine-learned patterns to identify targets, was assumed to have a 15% error rate… but the bombs would drop regardless.

These are new facts, I guess: I hadn't heard the specific stories of atrocities from the mouths of the people committing them, but I knew all this. I knew the power of surveillance technology, especially in the age of AI.

I knew the way Israel has systematically subjugated the Palestinians — in part thanks to co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s previous film, No Other Land.

I knew that Israel was committing genocide.

This is why I've given a whole lot of money over the past few years to Gaza-related charities and in particular the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and tried to inspire others to do the same (particularly through my handful of (very expensive) “I give $5-10 to Gazan children for every minute I stream,” uh, streams.

Why I attended their inaugural annual event (where the MC told the entire room that I looked like Justin Bieber).

I don’t say any of this to be self-congratulatory: I’ve done more than most but so much less than many. And seeing NAZA has not changed… anything(!) for me, yet I feel the weight of it.

Movies often move me, but there is something unique about this experience. When the credits rolled, no one in the theater moved for minutes, and only two people in the full house left before the lights came up.

We were all stunned.

I have had headphones on for the last couple of hours, and I have yet to actually put on music. I can’t watch anything. I can’t read anything. All I can do is write this.

Because the only thing I can do with NAZA is evangelize it.

The gasps throughout told me that this was news to many of the people in that room… and that is a group of New Yorkers who came out at 5:35 on a Thursday to see the film.

For the larger majority, the ones who think that yeah it’s probably bad or even definitely extremely bad but cling to the belief that there was ever good there — that maybe this was something that just spiraled out of control instead of the exact outcome that the IDF (IOF) was aiming for? This would hit them like a train.

The propagandists will lie, of course, and say that these obviously true things are not. But nothing they say mattered before and it certainly doesn’t matter now. No strongly worded denials could ever outweigh hearing the words of genocide from the people committing it.

It’s in theaters now, but The Guardian, which produced the film, will be streaming it on their site late next month. Hopefully it will be free. Hopefully as many people as possible can see and hear these stories and feel the things I’m feeling now.

I don’t know if that moves the needle, here or anywhere… I don’t know if a broad release of this project changes anything. But all it can do is show you the truth.

And all I can do is tell you to see it.