Israeli Americans Screen October 7 Footage Outside 'NAZA' Premiere

More than 50 protesters gathered outside Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall on Saturday afternoon as the New York Film Festival screened "NAZA," a documentary the Israeli-American Council has called "anti-Israel."

The Israeli-American Council (IAC) organized the demonstration. The organization said the film "makes serious allegations about the IDF's conduct in the Gaza Strip while ignoring findings and information that contradict its claims" and fails to present the full "context of the October 7 attack that led to the war."

Mobile LED trucks parked outside the venue projected graphic footage from October 7 and portraits of those killed that day. Demonstrators carried signs reading "LEARN THE FACTS. KNOW THE TRUTH." More than a dozen police officers stood watch.

"We mourn every innocent life lost in this war, Israeli or Palestinian. But compassion for Palestinian civilians does not require us to erase October 7, ignore Hamas or accept one narrative without questioning it," said Noa Peri-Jensch, chief communities officer of the IAC. "This is why we are here today: not to prevent anyone from speaking, but to make sure that our voices, our experiences and the truth are being heard as well."

"NAZA," shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, shows "in detail the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza," according to its description. The film won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival. It is set to release in more than 50 territories before streaming for free on The Guardian's website.

Peri-Jensch introduced Rom El-Hai, a survivor of the October 7 attack on the Nova music festival. He said "it doesn't surprise [him]" that the New York Film Festival would screen a film made by "traitors" to the Israeli cause.

"If there is someone here who wants to make a film about genocide, about hatred, brutality and killing innocent people, all the material is here," El-Hai said, flashing his phone to the crowd. "I took pictures of everything. I saw the hatred with my own eyes."

Karen Toledano, a protester standing in solidarity with the IAC, said Israeli voices "have been stifled" within the creative community.

"I feel like our voices have been stifled in spaces that have called themselves inclusive for many years," Toledano said. "Sometimes when I do try to have a calm conversation and I'm encountered with anger, I know in my head that there just isn't an argument on the other side. But it doesn't make it any easier to swallow when really all you want to do is talk about the facts and set the record straight."

The protest came two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, prompting a mass walkout of delegates. "Where were you when the Iranian tyrants butchered and maimed tens of thousands of unarmed Iranian civilians?" Netanyahu asked the emptied chamber.

Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters gathered outside the United Nations building that day, resulting in roughly 100 arrests, including actors Hannah Einbinder and Susan Sarandon.

"The U.S. government has the power to bring an end to all of this killing, pillaging, and land theft, yet instead it chooses to welcome the butcher of Gaza with open arms," Einbinder wrote online after her release from detention. "The fact that the orchestrator of all this bloodshed is roaming freely in our cities is an indictment of BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS who enable and protect architects of genocide like Netanyahu. Let us not mistake the spectacle for the story: genocide is the headline, and it is time for it to end."

As "NAZA" rolls out across more than 50 territories and onto The Guardian's website, the confrontation outside Alice Tully Hall signals that each stop on the film's release is likely to meet organized opposition from Israeli-American groups.