Benjamin Netanyahu wants to change the law because of a documentary.

The Israeli prime minister said Wednesday he will bring two bills before the Knesset aimed squarely at NAZA, the film that just won the Special Jury Prize at Venice. One bill would strip citizenship from anyone found to have slandered IDF soldiers. The other would multiply by twenty the damages a person can be sued for in defamation cases tied to such claims.

"We will hit them in their pockets and also in their citizenship," Netanyahu said, adding that people found to have made such claims have no place in Israeli society. He framed the push as a response to what he called global antisemitic incitement.

NAZA is co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, both Israeli Jews. Abraham appears on camera in the film, interviewing subjects on a rooftop who describe an IDF acronym, NAZA, standing for Nezek Agavi, meaning acceptable collateral damage during strikes aimed at Hamas militants. According to Israeli military personnel interviewed for the film, the threshold for what counted as acceptable loss shifted case by case, sometimes under a dozen, sometimes running to 200 or even 500 people.

The film landed in Venice's competition lineup late and still walked away with a 25-minute standing ovation at its premiere, before taking the Special Jury Prize on Saturday night. Abraham and Szor were also among the four credited directors on No Other Land, which won the Oscar for best documentary.

Officials line up against the film

Netanyahu isn't the first government figure to go after the filmmakers. Culture Minister Miki Zohar had already floated revoking their citizenship before the prime minister's announcement. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett weighed in on Friday, saying he was grateful to reservists and soldiers who, in his words, stand between the country and its next massacre. He called the film's suggestion of genocide a cowardly blood libel, not courageous filmmaking.

None of this amounts to a formal legal finding against Abraham or Szor. What the film alleges about IDF conduct remains an allegation, contested loudly by the country's political leadership, not a settled fact established in any court.

What happens next depends on the Knesset. Neither bill has a stated date for introduction or vote, and it isn't clear yet whether either can survive Israel's legal framework on citizenship revocation, which has historically applied in narrower circumstances tied to security offences, not artistic or political speech. Abraham and Szor have not yet responded publicly to the prime minister's remarks. Whether the festival win changes anything about the film's distribution prospects, especially in Israel itself, is now an open question too.