The Israeli government has begun promoting a link to a hastily produced online film entitled NAZA: The Real Story, a project that mimics the NAZA documentary and its findings about Israel's mass killings of civilians in Gaza. The move comes as the original film, directed by Oscar-winning film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, continues its cinema run and faces an official backlash in Israel.

A rival film appears online

The new documentary was made by Ariel Averbuch, an Israeli attorney and army reservist, who described it as an "offensive move" to shift focus away from the allegations about the killing of civilians. The film is hosted on nazadocumentary.com and consists of anonymised interviews shot on rooftops in Tel Aviv. It claims Israel has the "most moral army in the world".

The website lists Roi Danino, a candidate for the rightwing Israel First party, as another film-maker on the project. Averbuch also founded an organisation which says it conducts "advocacy warfare", including publishing scripts for influencers criticising Abraham and Szor's previous film No Other Land, about the destruction of Masafer Yatta.

• •The website's domain was registered on 16 September, six days after NAZA's premiere at the Venice international film festival, where the film won the special jury prize after the longest ovation in the festival's history
• •The site initially falsely presented itself as a promotional page for NAZA itself, naming Abraham and Szor as directors and listing festival screenings
• •Its distorted synopsis removed the reference to the deaths of Palestinian civilians from the film's official wording; that wording was later removed once the rival video was added

The original documentary and its reception

NAZA is in cinemas and will be shown in more than 50 countries. The film contains 24 interviews with Israeli military insiders detailing an AI-assisted mass surveillance apparatus activated during the Gaza war, which targeted Hamas operatives knowing large numbers of civilians would die. It will be available free on the Guardian's website from late November.

The Israeli military has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, in a campaign a UN commission described as genocide.

Official reaction inside Israel

The Israeli government denounced the film and announced plans to strip Abraham and Szor of their citizenship, accusing them of treason. Within a week of the Venice premiere, Israel's ministry of culture had announced a formal investigation into the documentary and called for Abraham and Szor to be stripped of citizenship.

IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir said the military would use "every tool at our disposal" against the film, which also received a 10-page military response based on more than 100 sources. The Israeli embassy to the US, which shared the rival film, said the foreign ministry was not involved and that it had intended only to "amplify the message of its creators".

On Thursday, the Israeli government said it was awarding the film-makers a certificate of appreciation "for their contribution to Israeli public diplomacy", claiming tens of millions of views.

Questions over the promotion

The rival website's counter suggests the short film has been watched more than 42m times, while its official YouTube page shows about 30,000 views. A technical analysis suggested the viewer counter could have been driven by requests to the website, by humans or bots, rather than actual views; Averbuch said he did not know and referred the questions to his tech team.

A Guardian spokesperson said the promotion was a brazen attempt to mislead audiences and distract from the questions raised by NAZA.

At a Q&A after the film's New York premiere, Rachel Szor said the systems shown in the film were heavily concealed at home: "Our country is doing so much to hide these systems." She added that, in her view, it was not a world open even to the Israeli public.

Speaking at the London film festival on Thursday, producer James Wilson said Israeli politicians' "hysterical, vituperative, aggressive backlash" had not been anticipated by the team. He said Abraham and Szor had anticipated displeasure but not the level of aggression leading to threats and rabble rousing, and that the treason and defamation charges had been very difficult, stressful, horrible and scary for them.

The hostility has extended beyond official channels: demonstrators gathered outside Szor's parents' home demanding she face the death penalty, and a mural depicting the film-makers through the sights of a gun appeared in Ashdod. On Monday, far-right activist Mordechai David announced fundraising to establish a team that would "chase" Abraham, saying "We'll find him," in a video posted to Instagram.

NAZA remains in cinemas ahead of its free release on the Guardian's website from late November, while the Israeli government has awarded the film-makers its certificate of appreciation.