Modern genocide is driven by ordinary, technocratic people, as NAZA's testimony from Israeli intelligence personnel reveals
Source: Omer Bartov. "How do human beings rationalize genocide? NAZA provides a chilling look | Omer Bartov | The Guardian." October 9, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
Bartov argues that genocide is usually carried out not by monsters but by calm, educated professionals who treat killing as a technical task. He says the film NAZA, in which Israeli intelligence personnel talk casually about approving civilian deaths in Gaza, shows this, and that these people are uncomfortably similar to the rest of us.
Conclusion
Genocide is enabled not mainly by sadists or brutes but by ordinary, recognizable, dispassionate technocrats and bureaucrats, and the NAZA documentary shows Israeli intelligence personnel playing this role in Gaza, so the killing there can be understood as genocide carried out by people 'just like us'.
Premises
- Modern genocide depends on two groups: those who kill at close quarters, and those who plan, organize and order killing from a safe distance. The first group exists in every society, but genocide cannot occur without the second.
- Historical cases (Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, the Herero) show the same pattern of planners, bureaucratic apparatuses and technical means enabling the killers.
- In NAZA, 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers describe in a calm, technical tone a surveillance and targeting system in which large numbers of civilian deaths ('NAZA', or collateral damage) were pre-approved. Approved numbers scaled with target seniority, reached hundreds of civilians, and, applied across tens of thousands of targets, would amount to 'all of Gaza'.
- The interviewees are not sadists or ideological Arab-haters but mostly upper-middle-class, elite-educated people who describe their work as 'fun' in the sense of professional performance, who did not dwell on victims, and who were told to 'trust the system' and 'complete the mission'.
- Psychological and historical explanations (Arendt's banality of evil, Milgram's obedience experiments, Nuremberg 'following orders' defenses) show that ordinary people can be conscripted into killing systems, while the Nuremberg principle holds that blatantly unethical orders must be refused.
- At least one interviewee states that Israel committed genocide in Gaza ('Yes. Completely.'), because the killing was intentional and calculated.
Assumptions
- The testimony of 24 interviewees is representative of the wider targeting system and its effects.
- The scale of civilian deaths and the permissive NAZA thresholds are evidence of genocidal intent rather than of aggressive but lawful war conduct.
- Parallels between Nazi technocrats and Israeli intelligence personnel are analytically apt despite large differences in context, ideology and legal setting.
- An interviewee's characterization of the conduct as genocide is probative of the legal and moral question.
- The film's selection and editing fairly represent the interviewees' views and the system as a whole.
- Resemblance in psychology (detachment, euphemism, obedience) implies resemblance in moral and legal category.