Film Review: Tantura (2022)
The village of Tantura in 1948, as seen in Tantura, directed by Alon Schwarz.
Photo credit: Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
TANTURA (2022) DIR. ALON SCHWARTZ
Written by Belle McIntyre
This powerful and moving documentary about the Arab/Israeli war in 1948 is sure to stir up strong feelings. As an indication of the Rashomon contours of the history around the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, the fact that the Israelis call it War of Independence, and the Arabs call it Al Nakba (The Catastrophe) says it all. This well-researched film was largely based on a graduate thesis written in the 1990’s by Teddy Katz at the University of Haifa. He made 140 hours of taped interviews with Palestinian and Jewish men who were involved in the eradication of the Arabs after their surrender. They were massacred and put in mass graves. Their recounting of the events and their participation were chilling and stunningly varied in their attitudes, justifications and denial after 40 years. In a textbook case of compartmentalizing, one man says: “Was I supposed to admit to being a murderer?”
The focus is on a beautiful seaside village called Tantura which was a designated kibbutz with Jews and Palestinians living together after partition. One cannot help but draw parallels with Indian/Pakistan partition and the bloodbath that followed. Teddy Katz’s thesis was accepted by the university with high praise. It was only after a few years that it was brought to the attention of the non-academic world that Teddy’s problems began. Those who he had interviewed sued him and caused him to recant. Soon after, he tried to retract his recant. He was not allowed and his paper was discredited and his degree retracted. His career was ruined and he suffered a series of strokes. But he still had the tapes.
When Alon Schwartz contacted him, he willingly handed them over to him. Schwartz then went back to interview these same men – now in their 90’s and more reflective, some exhibiting regret and revulsion at what had been done. Apparently David Ben Gurion had given a blanket authorization to get the Arabs to leave by whatever means necessary. A concerted effort to cover up this damning evidence of war crimes and ethnic cleansing was launched with the help of the mainstream media. The myth of Israel as a moral society is critical to the Zionist story.
To be fair, Israel has no corner on the market for righteous hypocrisy. What a stunning parallel to “American exceptionalism” in spite of the decimation of our native population by settlers or, more recently, the revelations of the cover up of the excruciating massacre in Tulsa. Sadly, the revelations of hideous truths of man’s inhumanity to man devolve into debates about how to memorialize them and who gets to decide. “What a piece of work is man.”
Teddy Katz, as seen in Tantura, directed by Alon Schwarz. Photo credit: Yonathan Weitzman. Courtesy of Reel Peak Films.
