Werner Best was a high-ranking SS officer and lawyer who helped organize the Nazi death squads responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews. He is also remembered for saying, “We must destroy the enemy without hating him.” He belonged to a younger generation of Nazi technocrats who looked down on the crude, beer-bellied, brown-shirted “old fighters” of the 1920s and believed in carrying out genocide in an orderly, emotionless way. After the regime fell, Best avoided justice for the rest of his long life and died peacefully in Germany in 1989. His chilling words came to mind as I watched the film NAZA.
I grew up in Tel Aviv and have visited often in recent years. That is why the interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers that make up this documentary felt strangely familiar. The conversations take place at night on rooftops, with the camera scanning the cityscape and lingering on apartment windows where people watch TV and make dinner. The landscape was intimately recognizable, and I felt a natural connection to those people living their lives. I also recognized how the interviewees spoke—their speech patterns and word choices. They reminded me of my son, who served more than a decade ago in the intelligence unit many of them may have belonged to.
But the detached, technical, and calm tone of the 24 men and women as they describe in great detail the killing of people in Gaza—people just as human as those in the surrounding buildings—brought back other associations: men like Best and his kind. It is the gap between the familiar and intimate on one hand, and the coldly efficient and murderous on the other, that makes this film unforgettable and an important statement about the world we live in now.
The term NAZA distances the operatives even further from what it stands for, which is itself just a euphemism.
When modern societies engage in extreme violence, they rely on two types of people: those who beat, torture, and kill at close quarters, and those who plan, organize, and order the killing from a safe distance, far from the actual bloodshed. Many people prefer to believe the brutes and sadists are responsible, largely because they are not like “us.” But modern genocide is the product of those in the second category: the technocrats, bureaucrats, and cold planners of extermination who never get their hands dirty.
This is by no means unique to Germany or Israel. It was also true in the Cambodian genocide, in Rwanda, in the genocide of the Armenians, in the destruction of the Herero—there were always those who provided plans, orders, justifications, bureaucratic systems, and technical means, and those who cracked skulls, wielded machetes, and fired bullets at point-blank range. The latter exist in any society. But genocide cannot happen without the former.
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NAZA is the Hebrew acronym for nezek agavi, or collateral damage. As is the nature of acronyms, the term NAZA distances the operatives even further from what it stands for, which is itself just a euphemism. One does not ask how many human beings the operator may condemn to death by targeting a suspected enemy; one does not even ask how much collateral damage may be inflicted. One simply asks, “How many NAZA?”
Most of what the film tells us was already known through investigative journalism from the last few years, published in outlets like the Guardian, +972 magazine, Local Call, and the New York Times. But hearing from the very people who operated this sophisticated system of surveillance and targeting provides a crucial perspective.
It is a perspective that is rarely seen—intelligence personnel are chosen for their ability to keep secrets, stay out of the public eye, focus on their tasks, and keep their emotions at bay.The combat warriors are always more visible. The silent men and women directing the bombs in dark, air-conditioned rooms get little attention. But perhaps more important is the fact that these 24 men and women expose what happens when the distance between them and the horrors they inflict breaks down: as they enter the homes of those they are about to kill by hacking their phones, hearing their voices, seeing the photos they took of their loved ones – briefly seeing them as normal human beings before they blow them up. For the viewer, the moments where they grapple with the scale of the killing they took part in are the most revealing.
In Gaza, the amount of approved NAZA depended on the seniority of the target, reaching hundreds of innocent civilians, according to the interviewees. Even if 20 NAZA, which became a benchmark, was applied to each of Israel’s tens of thousands of targets, “you end up with all of Gaza,” one of the soldiers concedes. “I just don’t know what to do with this understanding,” he adds, confronted with the reality of what “accomplishing the task” actually implies after having disciplined his imagination not to dwell on this reality.
People search buildings destroyed during airstrikes on 18 November 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza. Photograph: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
Another operative, when asked if he thinks Israel committed genocide in Gaza, says: “Yes. Completely.” The killing, after all, was intentional and calculated.
These are not the sadists of the popular imagination of what genocide looks like
Trying to comprehend his own actions, he professes disappointment in himself for taking part in the system. How does he explain it? He admits that at the time, his “hormones were going crazy.” He called his work on airstrikes “insanely fun”; they provided “a sense of meaning.” Was he thinking about the people in the building being bombed? “Zero. Not at all. I’d move on to the next mission.” He rejects the idea that he did not consider the victims human. “We just wouldn’t talk about those things.”
“There aren’t really any Arab haters in my unit,” says another interviewee. “It’s an elitist unit, full of people from Tel Aviv.” There’s no “extreme dehumanization,” he said.
These are not the sadists of the popular imagination of what genocide looks like. They are not the typical supporters of extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Many are upper-middle class graduates of the best schools who joined prestigious intelligence units, perhaps with the expectation of moving on after their army service to the hi-tech industry. But they, along with the fighter pilots, are responsible, it appears, for the vast number of civilian casualties in Gaza. What motivated them to rain down so much death and destruction? An officer ponders this question briefly: “All I can say is that we’re completing the mission. That was the mission.”
NAZA – official trailer
The notion of killing as “fun” is crucial. Thirty years ago, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen described in his 1996 book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, how German perpetrators enjoyed shooting people in the back of the neck and crushing babies against walls. They were the sadists. The “fun” recalled in NAZA is different – it has to do with the operatives performing at a high level, under great pressure, what they were trained to do, demonstrating their professionalism and efficiency. American drone operators sitting somewhere in the United States reportedly went through similar experiences as they dropped bombs on Afghanistan and Iraq.
There are many explanations for their inability to imagine, in real time, the horrors they wreaked on fellow human beings. Hannah Arendt famously spoke about a bureaucratic banality of evil, exemplified by Adolf Eichmann’s inability, or refusal, to imagine the moral calamity of his actions. This is of course not a unique propensity among Israelis or Germans. Stanley Milgram, who conducted an experiment atIn the 1960s, Yale University studied obedience to authority and identified the phenomenon. When a person in a doctor’s gown—or, in this case, a superior officer—tells people that something is what “the experiment requires” (in Milgram’s case, administering electric shocks to subjects who gave wrong answers), many, though not all, will do as they are told. “You must trust the system,” one man in NAZA recalls being told.
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During the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945, German defendants argued that they had only been following orders. Indeed, within the system they belonged to, what they did was perfectly legal and could be richly rewarded. The court, however, rejected this defense. It argued that unlawful orders exist, and that idea has also been widely recognized, including in both the United States and Israel. It means that if an order is blatantly contrary to ethics and morality, one is allowed to refuse it. In fact, one must refuse it or become complicit in the crime.
We should be glad that the 24 spoke out, even as they admit to having taken part in the destruction of Gaza. Their testimony offers a unique insight into how ordinary people get conscripted into a machinery of death. After all, in the end, even the most technical and detached form of distant killing is carried out, at least for now, by human beings, who think and feel and mostly act just like the rest of us.
Omer Bartov is the dean’s professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University and the author, most recently, of Israel: What Went Wrong?
NAZA, which is produced by the Guardian, is currently in cinemas across the UK and the US and will be shown in more than 50 countries. It will be available for free on the Guardian’s website from late November.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on Omer Bartovs review of Nazas book on genocide participation
Beginner Questions
1 What is the book about
Its a new book by author Naza that explores the psychology of genocide It asks why ordinary people decide to participate in mass killings rather than just following orders out of fear
2 Who is Omer Bartov
Omer Bartov is a wellknown historian and expert on the Holocaust and genocide He wrote a review of Nazas book which is where these insights come from
3 What does genocide mean
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that group completely
4 Why do ordinary people join in
The book suggests its not just about hatred People often participate because of a mix of career ambition peer pressure fear of being excluded and a desire for community or material gain
5 Is it just about following orders
No Bartov points out that the book challenges the idea that people were just following orders Many participated willingly because they believed in the cause or wanted to benefit from it
6 What is the main takeaway
The main takeaway is that genocide is not just committed by monsters It is carried out by regular people who make a series of choices that they justify to themselves
7 Is this book only about the Holocaust
No While the Holocaust is a major example the book looks at genocide more broadly to understand the common patterns in how people justify their actions
Advanced Questions
8 What is the banality of evil
This is a phrase from philosopher Hannah Arendt It means that evil acts are often committed by ordinary unremarkable people who dont think critically about what they are doing Nazas book builds on this idea
9 How do people justify their actions to themselves
The book argues they use several mental tricks They dehumanize the victims claim they are just doing their job say they are protecting their own group or convince themselves that the victims deserve it
10 What role does ambition play
A big role The book suggests that participating in genocide can be a way to get ahead It can lead to promotions stolen property
