We made this film for one simple reason: We understood that testimonies from officers and soldiers in the army that annihilated Gaza — those who conducted the surveillance, who calculated how many innocent people were likely to be killed in each house, and who repeatedly gave the green light to bomb entire families — would make it even harder to deny the crimes. And that denial is part of what allows these crimes to continue until today.

This is a film about a system. It focuses on orders, policies, and patterns of operation, not deviations from them. The conclusion that we draw from the testimonies is clear: The mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was not a “tragic byproduct” of a war against Hamas, as it is commonly portrayed in Israel, but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act. This is why a UN commission, the world’s leading human rights groups, and Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars have described it as a genocide.

The film’s title, “NAZA,” which is the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” is a critique of the way Israel portrays its killing of civilians — obscuring both the advance knowledge it has of how many people are likely to be killed in each strike, and the intent to destroy that has accompanied the military campaign from the outset.

One of the officers we interviewed describes how he was fully aware in real time of hundreds of cases in which families were going about their normal lives — a man talking to his wife, the sound of a TV show, prayer, a crying baby — and then he gave the clearance to bomb them. When asked why, he explained: “You understand that the objective is to destroy.”

In a couple of months, the movie will be made available online for free by The Guardian.

I hope the testimony of these people can be used in some prosecution of themselves and their friends.