Netanyahu Vows to Strip Citizenship From Israelis Who Criticise the IDF

Benjamin Netanyahu is calling for a new law that would strip citizenship from Israelis who criticise the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

The proposed law comes in the wake of an Israeli backlash against the directors of NAZA, a documentary about the Israeli military’s AI-assisted mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last week.

In a video posted on X on Wednesday, the Israeli prime minister called for a change in law which would mean “anyone who slanders IDF soldiers” could have their citizenship revoked. 

Netanyahu said: “We will hit them in their pockets and also in their citizenship, because their place is not among us.” He also called for a second new law that would raise “the defamation damages they can be sued for twentyfold.”

Netanyahu’s post, captioned “we will stand by our heroic warriors”, comes after Israeli culture minister Miki Zohar wrote to the state’s immigration authorities asking for NAZA directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor to be stripped of their citizenship on Monday. 

Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that Israel is the “only true democracy in the Middle East”.

Abraham and Szor, who won an Oscar for their debut documentary No Other Land along with two Palestinian directors in 2025, have been subjected to a campaign of escalating threats, including verbal attacks from senior ministers and crowds of protesters gathering outside their families’ homes with chants of “death penalty for traitors”. 

A mural appeared in the city of Ashdod in southern Israel depicting Abraham and Szor with crosshairs, horns and bearing the word “traitors” in Hebrew.

Israeli TV channel i24 reported on Wednesday that Zohar had called for Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security and counterintelligence agency, to investigate the documentary’s sources. 

NAZA features interviews with 24 Israeli military intelligence officers and soldiers, and documents allegations that the mass civilian casualties were “not by accident, but by design” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

The film is named after an acronym for nezek agavi in Hebrew, which means “collateral damage”. It received a 25-minute standing ovation in Venice, the longest in the festival’s history. 

The IDF has rejected the testimony documented in NAZA, claiming instead that it operates in Gaza “in accordance with international law and the laws of armed conflict”. 

Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, including 21,000 children, and continues to kill Palestinians in near-daily attacks despite a ‘ceasefire’ being in place.