The filmmakers behind NAZA, the award-winning documentary about Israel's systemic mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, took the stage at the film's North American premiere in New York on Saturday. They did so while Israeli officials threatened to strip them of citizenship and protests raged back home - because nothing says "robust democratic debate" like threatening the people who made the documentary.

Directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, the critically acclaimed film features testimony from 24 anonymized Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers. These are people who participated in the surveillance and remote killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and they describe the AI-powered systems used to select targets. It's the kind of inside look that usually requires a leak, a subpoena, or an extremely guilty conscience.

The film takes its name from an acronym used euphemistically by Israeli intelligence to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike. Those strikes are often conducted at night in private homes, killing many family members - including children - at once. So, to recap: a documentary named after a euphemism for expected civilian deaths is being met with threats from officials. The irony is not subtle, but then again, neither is the subject matter.

Abraham and Szor defended their findings at the premiere, because when you've got 24 people with firsthand knowledge of how the targeting works, "defending your findings" is less about opinion and more about pointing at the evidence. The threats from Israeli officials to revoke their citizenship, meanwhile, suggest that some people would rather change the filmmakers' nationality than address the content of the film. That's one way to handle a documentary. It's not a good way, but it's a way.