Israel has the horrific evidence. Where is the international campaign? - comment

Three years after October 7, Israel still invites people into closed rooms to watch evidence that it wants the whole world to understand. An officer brings a hard drive. Recording is forbidden. After 47 minutes, the screening ends and the footage leaves with him.

I was invited to one of those screenings and didn’t go. I had seen enough of that day. But I keep wondering about the foreign editor who would investigate a recording, the filmmaker who could spend six months reconstructing an attack, or the audience that would trust their work. What are we doing to make that possible?

The Venice prize for NAZA, the documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, makes the question more urgent.

Whatever we think of its allegations about Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, its filmmakers have assembled the partnerships and experience needed to reach an international audience. Israel has an enormous archive of October 7. Access to it should produce far more reporting than a series of invited screenings.

IDF: The testimony cannot be verified, people approve targeting decisions

NAZA draws on anonymous testimony from soldiers and intelligence personnel who say the army calculated expected civilian deaths before airstrikes and proceeded with them anyway. The IDF says the testimony cannot be verified and that people approve targeting decisions.

Foreign journalists should investigate those allegations and press the army for detailed answers. Culture and Sport Minister Miki Zohar’s threat to revoke the directors’ citizenship gave them something considerably easier to write about.

Abraham and Szor, who won an Oscar last year for No Other Land, secured The Guardian as a co-producer and Jonathan Glazer as an executive producer. They know whom to approach, how to finance a production, and how to get it seen. Israeli officials could learn something from that, however much they dislike the film.

In April, I wrote about Al Jazeera and the sustained investment behind its international reach. I argued for substantial funding for independent international journalism, with owners prepared to finance reporting and respect editorial decisions.

Working through the October 7 archive would require that kind of commitment. Researchers, translators, editors, and lawyers have to be paid. Distribution takes money and contacts. A donor needs to understand that the film may take a year and include conclusions he dislikes. Financing it should buy him neither script approval nor the right to remove an inconvenient interview.

I would ask the authorities to identify 100 previously unpublished recordings that could responsibly be released, then offer them individually to foreign newsrooms. Reporters would receive original files, information about their origins, and help contacting witnesses willing to speak.

An exclusive gives an editor a reason to assign staff. Those reporters can establish locations, compare recordings, and question the explanations they receive. When they publish, they can explain to readers what they could verify and what they couldn’t.

Officials would need to accept some uncomfortable reporting. A recording might document both a Hamas atrocity and the hours before help arrived. A witness might describe extraordinary bravery and a government failure in the same interview. Trying to suppress the second part would give people reason to distrust the first.

Reconsider the assumption that the most graphic recording is the most useful

Last December, I proposed a civilian public diplomacy reserve, with a permanent staff and professionals contributing several weeks a year. Teams would work in languages they knew, dealing with countries whose media and culture they understood. I offered to volunteer and wrote that others with media experience were willing to contribute.

They could spend those weeks helping foreign journalists work through the archive. A producer needs a translation checked; a reporter is waiting for an answer from the army; a documentary team cannot find a witness. These requests often require repeated calls and someone who knows whom to ask. A journalist abroad should have a reliable contact who will pursue an answer.

The reserve’s advocacy role would be public. Journalists would retain control over their reporting and disclose relevant funding or assistance.

We should also reconsider the assumption that the most graphic recording is the most useful. Footage can establish planning, coordination, and the sequence of an attack. People can learn something substantial without watching someone die. Given my own decision to decline the screening, I can hardly demand that everyone else watch it.

Families must approve the use of recordings showing their relatives. They need time to decide, and a refusal must be respected. Material involving sexual violence requires particular care and a specialist’s review.

Much has already circulated. Some people have justified what it shows, and another recording may change nothing for them. October 7 evidence also cannot answer every allegation about Israeli conduct in Gaza. The army must address those questions separately.

There are still readers who know little about the massacre, or who doubt accounts they have encountered. Someone who distrusts an IDF statement may be moved by an investigation from a newspaper they have read for 20 years. That newspaper, thus, should be able to examine the evidence.

Helping it do so may earn the government very little credit. A completed documentary may omit mentions of Israeli officials or may include criticism of them. Ministers would have to tolerate that in return for reaching people who rarely believe anything they say.

I would consider that a good use of public money. Another closed screening for people already sympathetic to Israel needs a better justification, three years on.