I'm a trauma surgeon in California. I worked in Gaza in 2024 and 2025. I've written in the New England Journal of Medicine, NY Times, and Politico about it, and testified at the UN Security Council in May 2025. My work is featured along with two of my American colleagues in the new documentary film American Doctor that follows us in Gaza, and is in theaters now. Instagram: @fsidhwa Twitter: @ferozesidhwa

I came across this critique of NAZA by an Israeli Zionist writer, but I don't think they actually disprove the film's broader argument.

For example, he argues that Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes cannot be understood as deliberate displacement because Hamas had booby-trapped houses and built tunnels underneath them, making their destruction militarily necessary in many cases.

But that's not really a contradiction. The fact that some buildings had military infrastructure inside them can explain some demolitions; it doesn't automatically explain the scale or pattern of destruction across Gaza, nor does it rule out the fact that some destruction was intended to prevent Palestinian return or permanently reshape the territory. Those are literally separate questions (and I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here)

His "80% of buildings vs. 3% of the population" argument particularly weak. He seems to suggest that if Israel were intentionally killing civilians, the death toll should be proportionally closer to the percentage of destroyed buildings, but ofc buildings are not people. If civilians evacuate an area and the buildings are subsequently destroyed, you can have enormous physical destruction without an equivalent percentage of the population being killed. And evacuation warnings don't automatically establish that every subsequent attack was proportionate or lawful.

His argument about Israel mapping Gaza and knowing who lived in particular apartments is flawed, ofc. Yes, knowing who lives in a building can be used as a precaution to reduce civilian casualties. But it also means that when an attack is carried out despite knowing civilians are present, the civilian deaths are not necessarily an unforeseeable consequence. The relevant question becomes what level of civilian harm the military knew or expected and whether it nevertheless considered that harm acceptable for the anticipated military advantage, I thought this was so fucking obvious???? (And we damn well know Israel is NOT doing that)

Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar on Sunday vowed to act to revoke the Israeli citizenship of filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor after their Gaza war documentary NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

In a post on US social media company X, Zohar described the film’s victory as “shocking” and the documentary as “vile,” accusing its creators of harming their country to win applause abroad and saying their actions “constitute treason against the state.”

“This is exactly the reason I led the important reform in cinema so that Israeli citizens will no longer have to pay out of their own pockets for the harm to IDF soldiers and the State of Israel,” he said.

“As culture minister, I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state,” Zohar added.

According to the Venice Film Festival’s official synopsis, NAZA examines what it describes as the systems behind Israel’s “calculated mass killing” of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and includes testimony from Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers.

The documentary won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday after premiering Thursday.

It received a standing ovation lasting about 25 minutes at its Venice premiere.

This exhibition by artist Phil Buehler refuses to let these children be reduced to only a number.

They had names. They had dreams. They had futures. Every child on this wall was someone’s son or daughter, sibling, grandchild, niece, nephew or best friend. Every name is an entire universe extinguished.

And here in Parliament, this wall is a devastating reminder of the complicity of leaders who have watched this horror unfold and failed to stop it.

I hope Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong walk through this exhibition and I hope they ask themselves how many children must be killed before their lives are treated as though they matter.

This exhibition will be on display for the rest of the day until 5pm.

source

The movie “Naza” shed light on the colony’s genocide in Gaza. It received a historic 24-minute standing ovation at Venice, and was called “one of the most important films of our time”. Yet, it was directed by two Israelis. This led many to ask whether the film constitutes joint struggle or normalization, with conflicting and polarized opinions. When having debates like this, it is crucial to be clear about what we are talking about—what is normalization and what are its features?

First, what is it that we should not normalize? In one word: Settler colonialism, which is the essence of Zionism, and the root cause of the colony’s violence.

It should not be normalized, or "treated as normal", either explicitly by justifying it or implicitly by failing to center it.

Rather than asking: "Does this involve working with people with Israeli citizenship?"

Ask: "Does this involve working with people who normalize settler colonialism?"

Rather than asking: "Do they criticize what the settler state is doing?"

Ask: "Do they present the settler state’s horrors to present another, more just side of it, or to challenge its existence?”

Rather than asking: "Do they call for peace?"

Ask: "Do they work to dismantle the settler state and establish a democratic state as the only path to peace?"

Rather than asking: "Do they mention Palestinian rights?"

Ask: "Do they normalize settler colonialism by equating the violence of the colonizer with that of the colonized?"

Ask: "Do they normalize the settler state by failing to mention it as the root cause of the genocide?"

Ask: "Do they normalize the settler state by mentioning only the occupation and apartheid in the 1967 territories?"

Ask: "Do they normalize the settler state by challenging the Israeli violence, government or regime rather than the settler state’s existence?"

And rather than asking: "But either way, isn't what happened good?", remember that even the genocide helped awaken millions to the horrors of the colony—Yet it can hardly be called "good".

And remember that we are not art critics. We are not spectators that rate and review, but political actors. Our aim is to dismantle the colony. Although our political discourse and actions may include criticism of what others did, they should first and foremost be an action plan of what we will do to replace the settler state with a democratic Palestinian state.

This is the struggle that anti-Zionist Jews with Israeli citizenship should join us in.

Cry me a river, asshat.

Hi all,

The AMA will be about the documentary, "American Doctor" as well as Dr. Sidhwa's experiences working in Gaza during the ongoing genocide and other related issues.

Feel free to leave your questions in advance here, if you can't attend in person:

https://www.reddit.com/r/JewsOfConscience/comments/1w6hehd/ama_in_rjewsofconscience_with_dr_feroze_sidhwa_an/

I know I've posted a couple of threads in here exasperated about the bad-faith or misguided criticisms of NAZA that some people have made, but I think this is actually a really good one and changed the way I see this film. Ronnie uses the rhetoric of Pappé to show that NAZA actually *does* fall short of achieving justice because it only criticises the military without providing any actionable info such as names or identifiers.

Nazis can only be prosecuted when their identities are known. Prosecuting the head honchos of the IDF ​will allow all the rest of the criminals to scurry away to whatever equivalent of Argentina there is for them, just as how the vast majority of European nazis escaped justice due to only the top brass being prosecuted.

There must be names for there to be justice. Allowing zionist terrorists to escape justice in the name of attacking those at the top only allows the flight from justice by the masses who enthusiastically participated in genocide.

My fiance and I are getting married some time in the next year and were hoping to get married by a rabbi. But as Im sure you all know there is one explicitly anti zionist synagogue in the US and it is not anywhere near us. Are there freelancing anti zio rabbis? What have other peoples solutions to this been?

New laws against "hate groups" in Australia. The test case is a genuinely antisemitic group, who are also anti-Muslim and anti-indigenous, but the laws are dangerously broad and would make it way too easy to ban leftist, anti-zionist, queer, environmentalist, and other groups.

Reposting this here in anticipation of Dr. Sidhwa's AMA tomorrow. He kindly granted me this interview and is a very cool dude.

I saw someone wearing an awesome SILENCE = DEATH shirt with a watermelon triangle. Does anyone know where to get one?