Speaking up for Gaza

0:02Noel King:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants to strip citizenship from two Israeli directors who made an acclaimed documentary detailing atrocities in Gaza. Also, Macklemore is back. What do these things have in common? Well, boycotts and protests of pro-Israel-Israeli artists, Israel-critical Israeli artists, non-Israeli artists who are pro - or anti-Israel artists who don't want to say anything about Israel at all, and artists who just wanted to say Free Palestine. are leading to cycles of cancellation, retribution, and resignation. So, is any of this helping people in Gaza? Is that even the point?

0:41Noel King:We're going to ask coming up on Today Explained from Vox.

0:59Noel King:Support for Today Explained comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation founded on a hard question. That question is, how do we make sure AI goes well for people? They're working on it, publishing what they find, even when it's uncomfortable. There's hope in hard questions. Ask your hard question at claude.ai.todayexplained. That's C-L-A-U-D-E.ai.todayexplained. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation.

1:40Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription, or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception, and it won't impact your future fertility. That's freedom to be. Use as directed. This is Today Explained.

2:02Noel King:I'm Noelle King. Most people haven't had a chance yet to see the documentary Nasa, but Bilga Ibiri did at the Venice Film Festival, where the filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zhor got a 25-minute standing ovation. NASA is a very grim documentary in which one of the directors, Yuval Abraham, sits on various rooftops in Tel Aviv and interviews 24 different Israeli intelligence agents and soldiers about some of the things they did during the Gaza war. And most of what they talk about are the different systems they used to effectively destroy homes and buildings in Gaza.

2:44The term NASA refers to collateral damage. It's a collateral damage figure. And so, for example, when they say something has four NASA, that means there are four other people killed besides the main target in a bombing. So at various points, different interviewees talk about five NASA, 10 NASA, 20 NASA, 200 NASA.

3:15Now, all the different interviewees, their identities are hidden. They're kind of covered by night because it's all shot in night. It's all shadow. It's a very dark, dark, like visually dark movie. So we don't get their names. We don't see their faces. And we've also been told that their voices have been modified. You know, some of them are very regretful. Some of them talk about how they kind of got into this, how they felt doing it, how they felt afterwards. One of them talks about how when he was younger, he went to Poland to learn more about the Holocaust. And, you know, he was kind of obviously knew about the Nazis, but was kind of appalled at what he saw.

3:55And then even at one point says, you know, I still think the Nazis are pure evil. What does that make me? Another one agrees that it's a genocide. While we see these interviews, there are also cutaways to buildings in Tel Aviv. This is kind of a very calm place. And Gaza, which is not that far away, has been basically completely obliterated. And there's kind of a contrast being presented in this.

4:25A couple of people talk about this notion that Hamas uses human shields, which is a way of saying, well, you know, there are homes where there's also military operations happening. Obviously, the implication is that that's a human shield. At the same time, you know, the film makes the point that Tel Aviv is also where the Israeli military is headquartered. And in fact, at one point among all these homes that we see in Tel Aviv, we see what appears to be a military boardroom with soldiers in fatigues inside it. So why is that not considered a human shield? That's kind of the question they're almost asking.

5:00You know, so there's a certain sort of exposing of the hypocrisy behind that statement as well.

5:07Noel King:I saw your review in New York Magazine, like a lot of people. The headline called this one of the most important films of our time. I don't think of you as an exaggerator. Tell me what you meant by that. I think Nasa is one of the most important films of our time, not just because of what it exposes, although what it exposes is extremely important. And even though it's not graphic really at all, except for one brief section at the end when we do see Gaza, and I think that that moment is very important, it's there to make you feel a kind of visceral outrage at what you're hearing. And you start to imagine what this could look like because people talk about how they can hack almost every phone in Gaza and they can listen in on families while they bomb them and they can hear moms screaming over their dying children.

6:00You know, the filmmakers have talked about how they are, in fact, using their privilege as Israelis to essentially put this out into the world because the reporting in the film is not new. You know, these reports have been published in The Guardian, in 972 magazine and other outlets. They also talked in their press conference about how Palestinian journalists have reported on this stuff. I think if a Palestinian, you know, Palestinian colleagues and journalists would try to call Israeli intelligence officers, you know what will happen. Like they will be maybe arrested indefinitely or killed and murdered.

6:38Like, you know, 200 journalists in Gaza and dozens across the West Bank. So we are examining a system where we know we have privilege. And I think by making a film, by premiering it at a big film festival, by kind of drawing the attention of the world on you, they feel that they can bring about more effective change that way and actually get people to cover it as we're seeing. There's more coverage of NASA, the film, than there was of these revelations earlier from The Guardian or from these other papers.

7:12So my name is Shani Lietman. I'm a journalist for Haaretz newspaper. I'm writing magazine pieces and also op-eds and sometimes film critics.

7:24Noel King:Have you seen the documentary, Nasa? I haven't. I asked the PR person of the movie to send me a link, and it's not possible. They don't have available links at the moment. I mean, considering the huge storm that came out, Now they're probably rethinking how to handle the distribution of the film. We're going to be talking today about what the reaction to this film in Israel has been like. But I think what I hear you saying is it's safe to assume most people in Israel have not actually been able to see the movie. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. But they are aware of what is in it. Let's talk about the conversation around this movie in Israel.

8:04Noel King:What's the reaction been like? So I think you can find many different types of criticism from all sides of a political range, by the way. It's not only right wing people or people who are supporting the war. The claims are first that maybe the film itself is not verified, like they have witnesses that are anonymous and that they didn't verify well enough. But I think most people are just, they just feel that this is an opportunity for all the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli and anti-Semite people in the world to attack Israel. NASA is part of psychological warfare aimed at the Israeli public and IDF soldiers.

9:00Inside Israeli society, the film becomes an internal voice telling Israelis the war they are fighting isn't just. They have internalized Jew hate and in turn used their Jewishness to kosher anti-Jewish ideas by assuming the role of the good Jew. It will not protect them, but in the process it can do untold damage to the Jewish people. Israelis from all sides are afraid of the way the world is seeing us at the moment. It's something that is really important.

9:34Noel King:Is anybody in Israel saying, hey, we're glad that they did it, we're glad that they made this movie? Yes, there are people who are supporting Yuval and Rachel, the filmmakers, supporting their right to criticize, to investigate. As a liberal country, we should be able to investigate ourselves, to criticize ourselves. And this is something that they are doing. They are doing their work as journalists. There has also been a reaction from the Israeli government at a more official level. What has the Israeli government said about this film? So the first person to react was the minister of culture.

10:15I will act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state. He said that Israel should, that the nationality of Yuval and Rachel, the filmmakers, should be revoked. That we should take their nationality. They should not be Israeli citizens anymore. And it was there's a really a really long history of films that were criticized by especially by different culture ministers. But the way I mean, I mean, I haven't seen anything like this, like what is happening now before. This is really frightening. I mean, I'm I don't know. I'm completely. I'm horrified by this.

11:09I already saw some clips on social media.

11:22By people who were, you know, filming themselves, where you can see, like in the background, you could see a house. And someone was saying, you can all come here. This is the house of Rachel Schor's parents. They live here and you can come and do whatever you want. I invite you all to come here and take revenge. And there were several clips with the same message, I guess. I'm guessing they're not coming back to Israel at the moment. I think it has become really dangerous for them to be here. and it's a new level. You know, I've never, even I published an article about this. I'm not, I didn't do the movie.

12:11I just published an article supporting them at Haaretz, in Haaretz. And my mother is afraid that they, that someone will attack me. I mean, this is also, yeah, like it, the echoes of this event are, they're going very far now.

12:34Noel King:Shani Litman of Haaretz. You also heard from Bilga Abiri of New York Magazine. Thanks to them. When we come back, the boycotts.

12:52Noel King:Support for Today Explained comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every big AI headline is a lot of important questions like, what does this mean for my job? Should I even be using it? Anthropic is a public benefit corporation founded on asking those kinds of questions. More specifically, they say, how do we make sure AI goes well for people? So Anthropic sat down with some people. They did more than 120 ,000 interviews. They asked those people for their hopes and fears, and they don't gloss over what they heard. Anthropic publishes that data even when it's uncomfortable. What came back, they say, wasn't just fear.

13:31Noel King:was curiosity with questions like, could this cure diseases? Or could my kids have a better future? Perhaps there is hope in asking hard questions. Ask yours at claw.ai slash today explained and keep thinking. Support for the show today comes from Framer. And if you're hoping to get those cute pictures all taken care of, this isn't the place. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right, prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash explained for 30 % off a Framer Pro annual plan.

14:29That's framer.com slash explained. Rules and restrictions may apply. With Framer, agents and humans work in tandem. Agents bring speed and scale. People bring taste, judgment, and control.

14:51Support for the show comes from Banta. With AI adoption growing, so are your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on. Get off of me! But if your team isn't getting any bigger, you can start to feel the strain. So then you might turn to compliance tools that promise automation. But for a lot of those tools, you can end up stuck doing a lot of the work by hand. Anyway, Vanta works differently. Vanta has an agentic trust platform that is built to scale with you, not to slow you down. With over 1 ,400 automated tests across 400 plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year round.

15:46Learn more at vanta.com slash explained, especially if you don't know what I'm talking about. Go to V-A-N-T-A dot com slash explained.

16:03This is Today Explained.

16:06Noel King:Arno Rosenfeld is the Washington correspondent for Haaretz. He's been writing about boycott of art and artists from Israel and those who have spoken about Israel and Gaza. So the Sheeran-Craft-McElmore debacle did not exactly catch him off guard. Yeah, I mean, I think that the sort of boycott and then reverse boycott, which you can sort of view this as, right, that, you know, it was reported that Robert Kraft put pressure on Ed Sheeran to drop McElmore. And then in response, other musical acts basically boycotted Ed Sheeran's tour. And there have been, you know, fans who are very upset. But to some degree, this speaks to the imminence that a lot of people feel about the actual events in Israel and Palestine, right?

16:47That policymakers are not actually changing the facts on the ground. And so it's incumbent on them to do something. And that comes out in these boycotts. But it's certainly not limited to one side. The power dynamics are different and interesting. But yeah, everyone's boycotting everyone, it seems.

17:03Noel King:The movie Nasa is particularly interesting because it brings attention to atrocities in Gaza. But there are people who are denouncing the movie not because of what it says or doesn't say, but because it was Israelis that made the movie. What's going on there? Yeah, so I think it's a few things that are going on. One is sort of a legitimate critique that we often hear. I think it has its own problems, but it's basically a complaint that when Israelis call out Israeli human rights abuses, they are taken more seriously than when Palestinians call out those same things. So sort of like, why did we need an Israeli film to tell us about these things?

17:43We've been saying them for three years or 10 years or 20 years. And I get that. I don't think it's that unusual. This is a pretty common thing that when someone who is on the side that is being accused of wrongdoing acknowledges wrongdoing, that's given greater weight because they're viewed as like less biased. But I get why people think that's problematic. What we're also seeing, though, is just this kind of complete and total demonization, not just of Israel, but of like anything associated with Israel. So the fact that the filmmakers are Israeli, even though they share the political critique of Israel's opponents and critics abroad, is viewed as like it must be disqualifying because Israelis are bad people.

18:22Noel King:I'm not supporting anything made by proud Israelis, even if it's supposedly pro-Palestine. The half-hour ovation is simply ridiculous. NASA is a couple liberal Zionists that see their apartheid occupation is near its end. So they're trying that old criminal's trick. See ya. So I don't know what to do with this information that Israelis made a film or are engaged in a critique that I share. And, you know, a lot of it is just about this kind of vitriolic hatred toward Israelis, regardless of the political context.

18:56Noel King:This is not the first time that this has happened since October 7th. You've written about other examples, other complex examples. Tell me about some that you've followed. So, you know, Nadav Lapid, who's an Israeli filmmaker who's sort of been living in self-imposed exile in France, was sort of kicked out or pressured to leave a film festival in France because the film that he had produced, which was very critical. It wasn't a documentary like NASA, but it was basically also accusing Israel of genocide had received a grant from, I mean, the justification was sort of that it had received some grant from some quasi-governmental or, you know, an NGO in Israel that received government funding.

19:35And that therefore he was complicit, even though he's like, you know, one of the main public enemies of like the culture ministry. And, you know, and he said at the time, like, what do you want from me? Like, I left. You think like Jews have unfair privilege in Israel or that, you know, Israeli Jews should leave? Like, I left. I'm in France. Like, you think we should speak out against the government? I'm speaking out against the government. That's what my film is about. And, you know, still that wasn't viewed as sufficient. So it's a fractured thing that we're seeing. Similarly with NASA, I wouldn't characterize it, the main response as being critical or calling for a boycott of the film.

20:07It's just elements within the movement, but it's a real, you know, line of division. A similar incident, Israeli authors, there's been a lot of, you know, Israeli authors talking about difficulty being published or getting their books into translation. There have been, you know, Israeli musical acts who have faced protests or interruptions at their concert. So yeah, that's been going on for a long time. It's just interesting now that it's also spilling over into the Israelis who are being critical of the government, and that's still not viewed as good enough by some people.

20:40Noel King:Historically, there has been a difference between people complaining online, even if we're talking about like hundreds of thousands of people complaining online, and a formal boycott. What form are these critiques taking? Are these formal boycotts? Are they informal boycotts? Like, what is behind them? So the BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divest and Sanction, is this sort of global, you know, nonviolent campaign to pressure Israel to, it depends who you talk to, but to change its policies to the Palestinians in one way or another. And so the idea is, you know, one tranche of that is boycotts that kind of anyone can participate in.

21:22And those are intended to be strategic boycott targets. So, you know, we're going to boycott SodaStream to pressure them to, you know, move their manufacturing facilities. Honestly, boycott SodaStream. Free Palestine.

21:33Noel King:Literally, like, all of them exist. Made in Israel. Made in Israel. Boycott SodaStream. And if you want to be a good little watermelon and help out any way you can, I'm going to show you an alternative to the CO2 cylinders if you still want to keep your bubbles. We're going to pressure Caterpillar to not sell, you know, bulldozers to the Israeli military. Caterpillar is very much still providing the Israeli government with the tools they need to displace and dispossess the Palestinian people to keep the apartheid going. Zionist and Israeli products have no business in Costco. We don't want to be buying their products.