NAZA documentary illustrates Hanna Arendt’s “banality of evil” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Evil usually arrives in the form of ordinary people who have stopped seeing the humanity of those they have been taught to fear, hate, and dehumanize, even if they’re children. 

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

One of the most important moral lessons of the twentieth century is that evil is not confined to a particular nation, religion, ethnicity, or people. The Holocaust did not occur because Germans were uniquely evil. It occurred because enough people embraced evil ideas of racial superiority, supported evil policies, obeyed evil orders, or looked away while evil was being committed in their name.

That lesson is universal. It applies to everyone, to every society. And if we are unwilling to apply that lesson universally, then we have to accept that in the face of the evil being committed by Israel in Gaza, we have learned nothing from history.

The growing significance of the documentary NAZA, written and directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, lies not merely in its allegations about the crimes committed in Gaza, but in the profound moral questions it raises about the individuals who designed, managed, justified, and implemented the destruction of an entire people and society. According to published reviews, the film draws on testimony from 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers who describe the operation of AI-assisted targeting systems and the bureaucratic machinery used to facilitate mass killing on an industrial scale. What emerges is not simply a portrait of military violence, but a disturbing examination of how evil can become normalized, routinized, and embedded within institutions, allowing ordinary people to participate in extraordinary crimes while convincing themselves they bear no personal responsibility. In that sense, NAZA is not only a film about the Gaza genocide, it is a film about the mechanisms through which human beings become agents of evil.

The importance of the Israeli testimony is not merely evidentiary but rather philosophical. It forces us to confront a question that many would prefer to avoid: What happens when ordinary people become participants in extraordinary crimes and acts of evil?

The German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt confronted exactly this question while reporting on the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. Her famous phrase, “the banality of evil” did not mean evil was trivial. It meant that some of history’s greatest evils were committed not by obvious monsters but by ordinary people who surrendered their moral judgment to ideology, authority, institutions, and career advancement. During his trial Eichmann repeatedly portrayed himself as a man who was merely doing his job and “following orders”. Arendt found that explanation profoundly disturbing because it revealed how easily human beings can participate in acts of evil while convincing themselves they bear no responsibility.

The testimonies described in NAZA evoke similar questions. According to reports of the film, Israeli military personnel discussed targeting systems, civilian casualty calculations, surveillance technology, and mass killing with a striking degree of bureaucratic detachment. Palestinian civilians became numbers, entire families became data points, and inflicting death and destruction became an administrative exercise.  The horror lies not only in what was done by Israeli officials but in how easily it was normalized.

Genocide doesn’t occur overnight

History demonstrates that genocidal atrocities rarely begin with killing. They begin with the dehumanization of a targeted population in a process that takes years.  Before people can tolerate mass suffering inflicted upon a defenceless population they must first be taught that those others are less human, less deserving of protection, less worthy of empathy, somehow collectively guilty, or an existential threat to the dominant population. Once that process begins, moral barriers collapse. Violence that would once have been unthinkable becomes acceptable, cruelty becomes state policy, and indifference becomes a virtue.

That process was visible in Nazi Germany beginning in the early 1930s, and it has appeared in numerous genocides and campaigns of ethnic cleansing throughout history.  And many critics, including Jewish scholars, Holocaust survivors, Israeli human-rights advocates, UN investigators, and genocide scholars, have argued that similar patterns of dehumanization and collective punishment are visible today in attitudes toward Palestinians.  What makes this argument especially significant is that some of the strongest warnings are coming from Jewish voices themselves.

The late Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer spent years warning that the lessons of the Holocaust were being betrayed when they were applied selectively. For Meyer, “Never Again” was not a slogan reserved for Jews alone. It was a universal moral principle.

Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos has publicly spoken about similarities he perceives between aspects of Palestinian suffering and experiences he witnessed as a child during the Second World War. He has criticized attempts to weaponize Holocaust memory as a shield against criticism of contemporary Israeli policies that justify genocide, and has insisted that survivors and their descendants have a duty to speak against injustice wherever it occurs.

Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram, who lost family members to Nazi persecution, has likewise condemned the devastation in Gaza and publicly called for an end to the violence.

These individuals are not arguing that history is repeating itself in identical form.  The Holocaust was a unique event without historical precedent. But they are saying that there are parallels between what the Nazis did to them and other Jews and what Israel is doing and has done to Palestinians.

History matters

The purpose of studying history is not merely to catalogue differences, it is to recognise recurring patterns. These include: dehumanization, collective punishment, exterminationist rhetoric, the treatment of an entire population as expendable, the rationalisation of mass suffering, and the replacement of morality with immoral obedience.  These are patterns that appear repeatedly throughout the history of human atrocity.

Since late 2023, a growing number of respected organisations, international legal experts, genocide scholars, and human-rights bodies have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza either constitute genocide or display characteristics consistent with genocide under the Genocide Convention. These include the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, the UN Special Committee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the International Federation of Human Rights, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. In addition, Prominent Jewish and Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars, including Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, Daniel Blatman, and Shmuel Lederman, have voiced similar concerns.

People may disagree with those conclusions. Ongoing legal proceedings and historical debate will continue for years. But it can no longer be credibly argued that such assessments come only from political activists or ideological opponents of Israel. Some of the most authoritative voices making these warnings are Jewish scholars, Israeli academics, genocide specialists, and Holocaust survivors themselves.

The most troubling aspect of the present moment is that the evidence of Palestinian suffering has been visible to the entire world.  It has been called “the most transparent genocide in human history.”  No one can plausibly claim ignorance. The destruction has unfolded live on social media, in photographs, in videos, and through the testimony of humanitarian organisations, journalists, doctors, aid workers, and survivors. Yet even amid this devastation, large numbers of people have continued to justify, excuse, minimise, or celebrate the suffering.

That reality demands moral scrutiny. If an individual supports the extermination of a people, that is evil. If a religious leader justifies the annihilation of a people, that is evil. If a political leader advocates the destruction of a people, that is evil. If a military commander orders actions intended to destroy a population, that is evil. And if citizens knowingly support such objectives, they are embracing evil.

This principle of human rights is universal. It does not matter whether the victims are Jewish, Palestinian, Armenian, Tutsi, Bosniak, Rohingya, or members of any other people. The moral standard must remain consistent. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the Holocaust is that no society is immune from moral corruption, that historical victimhood does not confer permanent innocence, and that the suffering endured by one people does not eliminate the possibility that some among them may one day inflict grave suffering on others. The tragedy of history is that persecution does not automatically produce wisdom, compassion, or justice. Many Holocaust survivors and Jewish scholars have warned precisely against this danger—that the memory of oppression can be transformed from a universal call for human dignity into a justification for denying the dignity of others. If the same processes of dehumanisation, collective punishment, and indifference to mass civilian suffering reappear, they must be confronted and condemned regardless of who the victims are or who the perpetrators may be.

That uncomfortable truth is exactly why so many Holocaust survivors and scholars have chosen to speak out. They understand that memory has value only if it informs present conduct. The real question raised by NAZA is therefore not whether Israelis are uniquely evil. The question is whether individuals who knowingly participate in, justify, or support the destruction of another people have crossed a moral line that should be recognized for the evil that it is.

The answer is yes. Because if genocide is evil, then those who incite it, facilitate it, normalize it, celebrate it, or participate in it are engaging in evil. If ethnic cleansing is evil, then those who advocate, implement, or support it are engaging in evil. If mass killing, dehumanization, and collective punishment are evil, then those who knowingly carry out such acts are engaging in evil.

The lesson of history is not that evil belongs to one nation. The lesson is far more frightening.

Evil can emerge anywhere. It can emerge in technologically advanced societies, among educated people, within democracies, and among those who regard themselves as civilised and moral.  When it does, it usually arrives not in the form of obvious monsters, but in the form of ordinary people who have stopped recognizing the humanity of those they have been taught to fear, hate, and dehumanize.

That was Hannah Arendt's warning. It is also what makes the testimony presented in NAZA so profoundly unsettling. The film is not simply a record of what has happened in Gaza during more than three years of genocide. It is a mirror held up to humanity itself. It forces viewers to confront how easily moral boundaries can erode, how ordinary people can become indifferent to the suffering of others, and how individuals and institutions can participate in immense human tragedy while continuing to see themselves as righteous, civilized, and justified.

The message of NAZA extends far beyond Gaza. History's greatest atrocities are not merely stories about the past. They are warnings written in the blood of their victims, cautioning future generations about what happens when hatred is normalized, when human beings are stripped of their dignity, and when conscience is surrendered to ideology, fear, tribalism, or blind obedience to an ideology.  We’ve seen this in Nazi Germany and we’re seeing it again today in Zionist Israel.

The events documented in the film remind us that mass atrocities do not begin with mass killing. They begin with words that dehumanize, stereotypes that demonize, and narratives that deny the humanity of an entire people. They begin when suffering is rationalized and when violence is reframed as necessity, security, revenge, self-defence, or historical destiny. As Arendt understood, evil rarely presents itself as evil. More often, it disguises itself as duty, patriotism, or moral necessity.

This is why NAZA is not simply a film about the victims of Gaza. It is a challenge directed at the conscience of the entire world. More than three years of death and destruction have unfolded before a global audience connected by unprecedented technology, instant communication, and constant access to information. Future generations will not be able to claim that humanity did not know. The more troubling question is what people chose to do, or chose not to do, with that knowledge.

Remembering history alone has never been enough to prevent atrocities. Humanity has repeatedly pledged "Never Again" since World War II only to watch new horrors emerge under different names, in different places, and against different victims. The price of those failures has always been paid by the vulnerable, the defenceless, and the dead. NAZA therefore stands not only as a testament to suffering but as a moral challenge to the living. It calls on us to reject indifference, to resist the normalization of injustice, and to defend our common humanity before cruelty becomes accepted as ordinary and atrocity becomes routine.

Ultimately, NAZA’s warning is not only about what happens to those who are targeted by violence and oppression. It is also about what happens to the societies, institutions, and individuals who tolerate, excuse, or ignore it. When conscience is silenced and injustice is allowed to flourish, the damage does not remain confined to its victims. It spreads outward, corrupting moral judgement, degrading human values, and diminishing the humanity of all who become complicit through action, silence, or indifference. That is the enduring lesson of NAZA, and it is a lesson the world ignores at its peril.

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