Israel’s culture minister demands Shin Bet investigation into NAZA director
Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar has approached the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, asking it to investigate possible links between Israeli filmmaker and journalist Yuval Abraham and Hamas, far-right Channel 14 reported on Monday.
Zohar sent a letter to David Zini, the far-right head of the Shin Bet, attaching open-source research by the settler Yesha Council into Abraham’s activities, as one of the directors of the documentary NAZA.
The Israeli minister said the organisation’s findings “require a thorough investigation” into Abraham’s conduct.
NAZA investigates the AI-powered systems behind Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The documentary features interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders, whose identities remained anonymous.
Since the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival last month, Israeli politicians, journalists, social media users and far-right protesters have attacked the film's creators, accusing them of treason.
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Zohar wrote that he hopes the collection of the data and sources provided by the Yesha Council, "will assist you and make it easier for the professional bodies to examine the matters and deepen the inquiry that I requested be carried out".
The right-wing minister referred to an earlier demand he made last month, requesting to open in an investigation into how Abraham and NAZA co-creator Rachel Szor managed to get hold of sensitive military information.
Last month, demonstrators gathered outside Szor's parents' home, demanding that she and Abraham be hanged as traitors.
According to Channel 14 News, the report by the settler group reviewed the links between Abraham and Palestinians with alleged Hamas connections.
It claimed that the Israeli filmmaker and journalist was in contact with Ahmed Alnaouq, a Gaza-born, UK-based journalist, and Ayman Gharib, a Palestinian human rights activist in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank, alleging that both men have links to Hamas.
Zohar told Channel 14 News on Monday that he approached "the head of the Shin Bet so that he would immediately examine whether an act of treason, or an act on behalf of a terrorist organisation during wartime, was committed here".
The culture minister added that he expects "the Shin Bet to carry out a full and comprehensive inquiry, leaving no stone unturned, until the truth is clarified as soon as possible".
The release of the film led Zohar, and later Israel's Prime Minister Benjamyn Netanyahu, to demand the revocation of Abraham's and Szor's citizenship.
Zohar's latest call to open an investigation into Abraham comes after Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir last month instructed military officials to seek legal actions against the NAZA creators and the soldiers who anonymously testified for the film.
Last week, as the documentary on Gaza grossed over €1.1m during screenings in Italy, the Israeli army said the film presented “a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture” of how the military operated.
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