It isn’t uncommon for states to retaliate against the filmmakers who insult them. Sergei Parajanov was imprisoned for daring to make poetic cinema in the era of Soviet Realism. Jafar Panahi’s twenty-year ban from filmmaking and six-year prison sentence have become the central theme of the very films the Iranian state seeks to suppress. Even in America, documentarians like Emile de Antonio, Errol Morris, and Frederick Wiseman have faced bans, bomb threats, and personal death threats. Within the long history of the repression of film and filmmakers, it’s hard to think of anything like the fury the Israeli state is raining down on the directors of NAZA, a new documentary tracing the IDF’s brutal campaign in Gaza.

The reaction from the Israeli government has been unambiguously hostile. Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar has threatened to revoke the citizenship of directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. They’re also facing potential criminal prosecution from IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and threats to their families by members of Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, who’ve assembled outside Szor’s mother’s house chanting “Death penalty for traitors.” Netanyahu himself, no stranger to violent incitement against political opponents, compared the film to a barrage of ballistic missiles aimed at Israel.

But these attacks have only served to elevate the profile of the film, which has been selling out theaters in New York and fueling the debate about who, if anyone, in Netanyahu’s coalition will end up in the Hague. As horrible as this ordeal must be for the filmmakers and their sources, one can’t help thinking that this reception speaks to the power art and journalism can have on national politics when it strikes the right nerve. American filmmakers should ask themselves why our films have lost this power to threaten the elite.