by Christos Zabounis
In the past, we had to get up from our desks, walk over to the nearby library, open the Italian-Greek dictionary and look up the translation of the word “menzogna”. “Falsehood,” “lie,” or “a lie,” depending on the era. The verb, however, remains the same: “to lie”. Who is lying? Netanyahu, according to the Italian magazine “L’Espresso”. What lie did he tell? According to the centre-left publication, he had allegedly been warned about Hamas’s attack by the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. And what was the Israeli Prime Minister’s response on the matter? He described the report published by the Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” as an “absolute lie,” while simultaneously filing a defamation lawsuit against it. Around the same time, for 25 minutes, audiences at the “Palazzo del Cinema” on the island of Lido applauded the creators of the film “NAZA”, which received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. What was the documentary about? The use of Artificial Intelligence to automatically generate thousands of potential targets in Gaza. And what does the word “NAZA” mean in military jargon? Collateral damage. Two young Israeli filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, interviewed 24 military personnel and intelligence officials who, under conditions of anonymity, described the operations in question. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, in a video posted on Telegram, described the film as “shocking incitement,” while Culture Minister Miki Zohar called it “treason” and took legal action seeking to strip the directors of their Israeli citizenship. As for the military (I.D.F.), it launched an investigation aimed at identifying the sources who provided the information, accusing them of leaking classified material. So where, exactly, is the truth – and where is the lie?
