I was there. And in a sense, I have been inside both films.
The first is Naza, an Israeli movie that won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and received an astonishing 25-minute standing ovation on Saturday.
Do not be deceived by the applause.
The creators of Naza are themselves Jews and Israelis. That creates a double deception: The film can be presented to international audiences not merely as an accusation against Israel, but as an accusation seemingly validated from within Israeli society itself.
Yet they employ against the Jews one of the oldest weapons in the arsenal of antisemitism: a blood libel.
I investigated the Israel Defense Forces’ war on the ground, including the deaths of civilians that Naza depicts as the consequence of a deliberate policy of cruelty and extermination.
The truth is the opposite.
Then there is the second screen: Netflix, where millions of viewers around the world are watching the TV series Fauda. It is a magnificent series, and in its latest season, it confronts an international audience with something many people have never truly understood: the horror of Oct. 7, 2023.
In the aftermath of the Hamas massacre, I visited the burned-out kibbutzim. I walked through the homes of murdered young people and saw blood in kindergartens. I saw the dead piled up. I listened to parents and children and heard testimony about rape and other atrocities.
These are the two screens now before us: the lie and the truth.
The reception given to Naza in Venice tells us something disturbing about a cultural milieu apparently eager to believe the worst accusations against the Jewish state. The anonymous voices in the film who claim that Israel made a decision to target civilians make accusations that my own experience contradicts. My witnesses are not anonymous.
At Tze’elim, I entered the high-tech command tents from which soldiers are directed building by building, house by house and tunnel by tunnel.
Asaf, a 51-year-old colonel, and other soldiers explained to me how instructions are issued in real time: Stop. Advance. Change route. Destroy. Avoid.
The purpose is twofold: to protect Israeli soldiers and to protect civilians.
That is the opposite of the picture presented by Naza.
Indeed, the more I have investigated Israel’s conduct of this war, the more convinced I have become of something extraordinary: Never in the history of warfare has an army done so much to try to protect the civilian population of its enemy. Never.
I also met the lawyers whose job is to determine, according to international law, whether a threat to life emanating from a tower, an underground tunnel or even a hospital makes a target lawful.
War is terrible. Civilians die. Gaza has suffered enormously. But suffering does not prove an Israeli policy of deliberately killing civilians. To turn the tragedy of war into an accusation that Jews deliberately thirst for innocent blood is something much older and darker.
That is why the applause in Venice matters. Twenty-five minutes of applause for a blood libel.
And then there is Fauda.
In episodes seven and eight, viewers encounter the Oct. 7 massacre in a way that millions around the world have never seen it before.
Most of the public has never watched the 53 minutes of footage from the massacre that many journalists and officials have seen, much of it recorded by the Hamas terrorists themselves. Perhaps they should have.
After Oct. 7, I spoke with Avida. Trapped in a shelter with one leg severed, he saw his wife, Dana, and 15-year-old Carmel murdered. Carmel told him: “Dad, bury me with my skateboard.” Avida survived with 13-year-old Hadar.
I spoke with Nir, the father of six-year-old Amit, who had been kidnapped.
“He’s a Juventus fan,” he told me. “He’s smart. You’ll see, he’ll make it through, and then I’ll take him to Italy.”
At the same time, the Bibas children were in the hands of Hamas. They, too, became symbols of what happened when the terrorists crossed into Israel on Oct. 7.
Now the world has two screens before it.
On one, Naza receives a jury prize and prolonged applause in Venice for presenting Israel as a country that deliberately kills civilians.
On the other, Fauda brings millions of viewers face to face with the savagery that started this war.
Lie and truth.
Deuteronomy tells us: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.”
Perhaps it is time to choose.
And perhaps it is time to choose the truth.
