Calling the shots: what NAZA says about perpetrator cinema

The documentary detailing Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza is the latest film to give a voice to those who carry out atrocities – confronting viewers with some of the most difficult questions of all

Are we still talking about the banality of evil? When that overworked phrase was first used by philosopher Hannah Arendt, it described the blank persona of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Now, in NAZA, anonymised members of Israeli intelligence discuss their remote execution of the assault on Gaza. The comparison to Hitler’s Germany, while understandably controversial, is made by a subject themselves. If they are banal, it is a modern, oddly familiar kind. These are articulate, middle-class millennials. They say they are leftwing and non-racist. Put differently, they could be Guardian readers.

And yes, one remarks, they have been conducting a genocide.

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Source: Guardian Culture