(JTA) — TEL AVIV – A documentary presenting testimony from Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers who say the IDF knowingly killed large numbers of civilians during its campaign in Gaza got a  25-minute standing ovation Thursday at the Venice Film Festival.

“NAZA,” directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews conducted over three years with 24 Israeli soldiers who said they were involved in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, most of them intelligence officers whose work was carried out remotely. The soldiers describe surveillance, target selection and decisions about strikes in which civilians were expected to be killed. Their identities are concealed in the film.

The Israeli army has rejected the claims in the film, saying it rips out of context conventional military considerations about the utility of hitting a target versus the collateral damage that might ensue.

Shot at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, the 80-minute documentary takes its name from the Hebrew military acronym for “collateral damage,” referring to civilians expected to be killed in an attack on a military target.

 

 

Abraham and Szor, whose previous film about Israel’s West Bank occupation, “No Other Land,” spurred controversy as well, wrote in the left-wing Israeli publication +972 on Thursday that NAZA focuses on what they describe as a military system in which anticipated civilian deaths were calculated in advance rather than being unintended consequences of strikes. In their account, one intelligence officer describes knowingly authorizing strikes on homes occupied by families, telling the filmmakers, “You understand that the objective is to destroy.”

The Israel Defense Forces has denied the central allegation underlying the documentary: that it has deliberately killed civilians as a matter of policy.

Responding to his 2024 investigation into the military’s use of an AI-powered database, known as Lavender, that generates potential targets for attacks, the IDF in April of that year said Hamas embeds its operatives and military assets among civilians, while Israel directs its attacks at military targets and operatives and conducts strikes under the rules of war that include proportionality and taking precautions to avoid civilian deaths.

The IDF said every target requires an assessment of the expected military advantage and likely collateral damage, and that the military does not carry out a strike when the anticipated civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the military advantage. The IDF also said intelligence systems described in the film are tools for analysts rather than autonomous target-selection systems and that targets require independent human review before any action is taken. “The IDF outright rejects the claim regarding any policy to kill tens of thousands of people in their homes,” the military said in a statement carried by The Guardian.

“We made this film for one simple reason,” the directors wrote in +972. “We understood that testimonies from officers and soldiers in the army that annihilated Gaza — those who conducted the surveillance, who calculated how many innocent people were likely to be killed in each house, and who repeatedly gave the green light to bomb entire families — would make it even harder to deny the crimes.”

The filmmakers said some of the soldiers’ accounts were so urgent that they published them before completing the documentary in a series of investigations for +972, its Hebrew-language sister site Local Call and The Guardian. The Guardian also produced NAZA with James Wilson, while Jonathan Glazer, the director of the Oscar-winning movie about Nazi-era complicitness, “The Zone of Interest,” served as an executive producer.  Glazer’s remarks in his speech in the 2024 Oscars linking his film’s thesis to Israel’s conduct in Gaza spurred a backlash.

In a statement published by the Venice Film Festival, Abraham and Szor said the documentary allowed them to examine “not only the words being said but also those that are not said, the silence.” The filmmakers said the documentary was intended not only for international audiences but “inward, toward Israeli society.”

“NAZA” is the only documentary among the 21 films competing for the Golden Lion at Venice this year. One of the seven jurors deciding the festival’s main prizes is Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose Gaza film “The Voice of Hind Rajab” won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize last year. The film, about a young Palestinian girl killed during the war, received what was then a record 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere. Israel has said it is investigating the circumstances of Rajab’s killing.

Haggai Matar, executive director of +972 Magazine and co-director of Local Call, wrote on X ahead of the premiere that the soldiers’ testimonies were ones “every Israeli must hear.” His post drew angry responses from some Israeli users.

One X user, who said he had fought in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, wrote that there “was never a situation in which entire families were killed intentionally” and accused Matar of “slandering hundreds of thousands of fighters” who had risked their lives to minimize harm to noncombatants. Another accused those promoting the film of joining those who “slander Israel around the world,” adding: “Shame.”

“NAZA” reunites Abraham and Szor after “No Other Land,” which they made with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal and which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2025. Adra and Ballal said they were blacklisted and barred from entering Israel while making that film, so the four filmmakers carried out their joint editing in Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages in the West Bank.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Documentary alleging Israel committed wanton killing in Gaza gets standing ovation in Venice appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — A landmark legal battle to determine whether Jewish women have a religious right to an abortion entered a critical new stage in Indiana.

The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday in a case that began with a local Jewish group’s 2022 religious freedom challenge to Indiana’s near-total abortion ban. The state  is appealing a permanent blocking of the ban that a lower court imposed in March.

The arguments, held in Indianapolis, explored a legal theory that the state’s abortion ban impedes Jews’ religious freedom because many interpretations of Jewish law prioritize the life of the mother over that of the fetus.

The case, one of the recent major challenges based on Jewish law to an abortion ban, could carry significant ramifications for how the American legal system weighs Jewish religious rights against conservative Christian doctrine, which strongly opposes abortion.

Indiana was one of several states to pass severe abortion restrictions following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning its 1972 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to an abortion. Separately, Christian groups and businesses have prevailed in national religious freedom cases determining whether they can be compelled to pay for contraception that can be used to perform abortions, arguing doing so violates their religious views.

But Kenneth Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, argued before the court Thursday that it was the abortion bans that curtailed the free exercise of religion. “Under Jewish law, the human life does not begin until the first breath,” said Falk, who argued the case on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice, a group formed explicitly to challenge the state’s abortion law, as well as two anonymous plaintiffs. While liberal Jewish denominations are generally permissive of abortion, Orthodox scholars offer more mixed interpretations.

In response to a question by Chief Justice Loretta Rush about what the state should do “further along in a pregnancy,” Falk said, “I don’t think anyone is going to be advocating for abortions of a viable fetus.”

In his arguments, Falk compared the Jewish women’s standing to what he called “secular” exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.

“What is the reason for allowing these secular exceptions, but not a religious exception?” Falk asked the justices. He also referred to permitted religious exceptions to healthcare laws in other cases, including vaccine mandates.

In March, a judge in the Marion County Superior Court ruled in favor of Hoosier Jews for Choice, permanently blocking the state’s near-total abortion ban in cases where it would “substantially burden their religious exercise.”

That ruling prompted the appeal from the state now under consideration, as well as conservative backlash, with Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks calling for the judge’s impeachment.

“Our nation’s long tradition of respect for religious exercise has never been understood to encompass a right to intentionally destroy human life, any more than a right to abusively punish children,” Indiana Solicitor General James Barta argued before the state Supreme Court on Thursday.

Barta otherwise largely sidestepped the Jewish group’s religious arguments in his own presentation. Instead he insisted that the plaintiffs did not have proper standing because they were not actively seeking abortions themselves, though one is hoping to get pregnant but worried about getting proper care if an abortion were required.

Their case, Barta insisted, was “purely hypothetical.”

A similar argument briefly prevailed in Kentucky in 2024, when a judge threw out a religious freedom lawsuit brought by three Jewish mothers against that state’s abortion law. The plaintiffs, the judge said in that case, lacked standing because none of them were currently pregnant. One of the plaintiffs, who was considering a pregnancy via in vitro fertilization, was allowed to appeal the case, which resulted in a partial victory this May when a judge struck down part of Kentucky’s abortion ban — related to a definition of when human life begins — as unconstitutional.

Many mainstream and progressive-leaning Jewish organizations, including the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League and representatives of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, are supporting Hoosier Jews for Choice and have signed onto briefs on the group’s behalf in court.

In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the NCJW noted that questioning from the justices Thursday “appeared to focus on more procedural matters,” rather than “the merits of the case.” Yet Darcy Hirsh, the group’s vice president of government relations and advocacy, said she was “hopeful” the court would rule in the Jewish groups’ favor.

“No individual should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs in order to comply with a narrow, Christian belief of when life begins,” Hirsh said.

A representative for the state of Indiana did not return a JTA request for comment following the oral arguments.

There are also Jews on the other side of the debate. The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, a legal advocacy group, has filed amicus briefs in support of the state.

“From a theological perspective, it’s hard to say what is the single Jewish teaching on abortion,” Josh Blackman, an attorney with the coalition and professor at the South Texas College of Law, told JTA following the oral arguments.

Blackman added that, of all major religions, Judaism has “the strongest basis for the right to terminate a pregnancy.” But, he said, Jewish groups should be mindful of advocating for a system “where Jews in Indiana can have an abortion but Catholics cannot.”

“At a time when there’s growing hostility between people on the right and Jews, I”m not sure this is the best use of Jewish resources,” Blackman said. “This could actually backfire in significant ways.”

There is no timeline for when the state Supreme Court might issue a decision on the case.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post A case pitting Indiana Jews against an abortion ban heads back to court appeared first on The Forward.

In the aftermath of 9/11, New Yorkers found countless ways to help. They lined up in record numbers to donate blood, delivered meals and medical supplies to first responders, and opened their homes to strangers with nowhere else to go.

And then there were the people who sat with the dead.

Starting on Sept. 20, 2001, Jewish volunteers took four-hour shifts at the city medical examiner’s temporary morgue in lower Manhattan, reciting psalms and keeping watch over the remains.

Without fail, a member of the Jewish community was there — 24/7, for more than seven months.

They were sitting shmira, fulfilling the Jewish tradition of staying with the dead from the moment of passing until burial. The volunteers — some of them college students — sat with and prayed for each of the victims, whether or not they were Jewish.

“Right after 9/11, all the way down till the next May, it was never a missed moment,” Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Congregation Ohab Zedek, which organized the shmira, told the Forward. “We never had a problem filling a spot.”

A congregation responds

Like many houses of worship, Congregation Ohab Zedek, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side, mobilized after 9/11. Congregants collected masks, filled boxes with clothing, and set up an assembly line to make sandwiches for those in need.

Schwartz also recognized the importance of shmira — determined that the horror of 9/11 would not interrupt the tradition that brings dignity to the dead. He asked a congregant, recently retired shoe salesman Armin Osgood, to coordinate.

“When Rabbi Schwartz asked you to do something, you did it,” Osgood, now 91, told the Forward. “There was not a question at that point.”

Osgood sketched out a schedule on a big yellow legal pad and began filling it in with names. Many Ohab Zedek congregants signed up. Others heard about the effort through word of mouth, sometimes from friends of friends. Some traveled from out of state.

The group included people with different levels of religious observance. All that mattered to Osgood was that they were willing to help.

“People called, and they said, ‘I don’t speak Hebrew. I can’t read Hebrew.’ I said, ‘So read the Psalms in English.’ ‘Well, I’m in a congregation where women wear pants.’ I said, ‘So wear pants,’” Osgood said. “Nobody gets excluded. If they want to do it, I’ll find a way.”

Ely Razin, 35 at the time, was among the Ohab Zedek congregants who volunteered. He took a shmira night shift, reciting tehillim next to the remains and trying to concentrate on the meaning of the ancient words.

“It helped me feel like I was doing something,” Razin told the Forward. “The act of shmira, in and of itself, somewhat gives you a sense of personal peace.”

Rabbi Schwartz took a weekly Friday morning shift, where he found himself providing spiritual comfort to people of all faiths. He befriended a Protestant minister who was often there to pray with bereaved families. Once, a Catholic family, unable to find a priest, asked Schwartz to say the last rites.

Unfamiliar with the Catholic tradition, Schwartz recited the Jewish memorial prayer kel maleh rachamim in English.

“I don’t know what their last rites look like, but I said the [Jewish] prayer we say at the funeral,” Schwartz said. “So it was a kiddush Hashem. That was a very meaningful moment.”

Keeping the chain

Keeping the morgue staffed 24/7 was no easy task. It was even more difficult on Shabbat — partly because Ohab Zedek, on the Upper West Side, was too far from the morgue in lower Manhattan to walk.

An Ohab Zedek congregant reached out to Jessica Russak-Hoffman, then a senior studying English at Stern College, Yeshiva University’s women’s college. Its dormitories were within a few blocks of the morgue.

“My dad always said, ‘If a mitzvah lands on your lap, you’ve got to pick it up,’” Russak-Hoffman said. “So I grabbed a clipboard, and I went outside and started recruiting.”

She ended up enlisting more than a dozen women. One was Judith Kaplan, then a junior at Stern, who often took the midnight-to-4 a.m. shift — spending many Friday nights as a college student at the morgue.

Kaplan’s nearby apartment became a home base for the volunteers. She cooked lunch and dinner for those sitting shmira, many of whom were missing communal Shabbat meals to take their shifts.

“It’s not everybody’s cup of tea to do this kind of thing, so you have to find someone who has the stomach for it, and the emotional capacity for it,” Kaplan said. “This is not an easy mitzvah.”

As the months went on, the group had fewer volunteers. Kaplan began taking eight-hour shifts, sometimes in the dead of winter and in the middle of the night. Stern College security guards accompanied her on the walk to the morgue.

“I felt a very big responsibility,” Kaplan said. “I felt very strongly that if we can’t find someone to sit, then I have to do it. I didn’t want to break the chain.”

Russak-Hoffman also took night shifts. She recalled how, whenever a first responder’s remains were identified, everyone would pause, stand and pay their respects.

For Kaplan, those moments underscored how the Jewish volunteers had become part of the broader recovery effort. Shmira, she emphasized, was never about distinguishing Jewish victims from others.

“They could have told me that every single Jewish body was identified, and I still would have sat there,” Kaplan said. “It did not matter what your faith was or what your culture was — we were all there for the same reason.”

Looking back

There would never be a moment when all the victims’ remains were identified. But at some point, identifications slowed. Schwartz decided to end the shmira on Lag B’Omer — a Jewish holiday that marks the end of a mourning period.

But for so many of the volunteers, the shmira’s conclusion was not the end of mourning.

“I definitely spent the next 20 years looking at open sky and expecting planes to go by and hit things,” said Russak-Hoffman, who now lives in Seattle. “Every time a proper commercial plane went by without context, it flashed me back.”

Razin, who now lives in Israel, said similar emotions resurfaced for him after the Oct. 7 attacks. Sitting shmira is considered chesed shel emet, the highest level of mitzvah because it is truly selfless, as the dead cannot repay the act. But Razin came to understand that the ritual also serves the living.

“They’re there to help not only the person who’s departed, but the people who are left behind,” Razin said. “It put a frame around something that otherwise was incomprehensible and monstrous.”

For Kaplan, who now lives in Jerusalem, the experience was formative. The tehillim — its pages now held together with a hairband — became a keepsake of that time. She has since brought the prayer book to her wedding and to the birth of her child.

“That’s how meaningful the experience was for me,” she said.

Schwartz plans to reflect on 9/11 and its aftermath in his Rosh Hashanah sermon this year, which falls on Sept. 11. Twenty-five years later, he said, the volunteers’ mitzvot offer a reason for hope.

“This was barbaric evil on the part of some people, but it really brought out the most incredible goodness in many more people,” Schwartz said. “We shouldn’t give up hope in mankind.”

The post After 9/11, Jewish volunteers kept watch over the dead. 25 years later, the grief remains. appeared first on The Forward.