Zionism must evolve in order to survive, writes the director of the documentary 'Tantura.' Israelis should be strong enough to acknowledge the suffering of the other side. Recognizing the Nakba is a first step toward a future of peace

The principal technique used to silence Teddy Katz almost a quarter-century ago was to look for a few errors in the quotations that appear in his master’s thesis on the Tantura affair – which was hundreds of pages long – and then threaten him with a SLAPP lawsuit [alleging defamation but really intended to intimidate the defendant from speaking out]. The aim was to dismiss his entire thesis as unworthy and also to make him recant.

Recent opinion pieces on the subject in the Hebrew Haaretz – by the newspaper’s music writer Haggai Hitron, and by lawyer Giora Erdinast – along with an article published website by historian Yoav Gelber on another Hebrew site, were written in response to my film “Tantura.” All are examples of the phenomenon so common on both Israel’s left and right of denying or minimizing the Palestinian “Nakba” (Arabic for “catastrophe”) during the 1948 war.

Before us is one of the most serious attempts in Israeli history to hide war crimes and silence a debate. The articles by Erdinast, Hitron, Gelber and other like-minded people include many skewed or incorrect details. They have the effect of throwing sand in the eyes of ordinary Israelis, who don’t necessarily possess the tools to check the authors’ claims.

Many Israelis find comfort in such articles, whose real purpose is to preserve the beautiful and heartwarming story we grew up on, and thus allow the national repression of our own history to continue: We didn’t expel anybody, the Arabs ran away on their own, the Israel Defense Forces is the world’s most moral army, our soldiers never commit massacres.

Before dealing with the fallaciousness of these articles, I’d like to add a general observation that also applies to the letter that the University of Haifa’s rector, Prof. Gur Alroey, sent to all faculty last June on the day before the screening there of my film. “Tantura” aspires neither to address the quality of Teddy Katz’s academic writing nor the question of whether he misquoted from a few of the interviews he recorded on audio tape 23 years ago when he was a graduate student. These aren’t the interesting issues, and that is why the film doesn’t deal with them. What is interesting is what actually happened in Tantura on May 23, 1948, and how it has been obscured and silenced in Israeli society, almost obsessively, ever since. The film lets the audience listen directly to raw materials recorded by Katz. It also combines recent interviews of soldiers who were at the scene at the time, and presents the findings of a thorough and new investigation based on documents, military aerial photographs and other archival materials.

The claim that inaccuracies in a small number of quotes in Katz’s work means the film deserves to be ignored is simply deception aimed at silencing the entire affair. Katz’s principal thesis was that during the day on May 23, 1948, after the night battle ended, the IDF killed many unarmed men in Tantura, committing horrific war crimes. I maintain that Katz is right.

Contrary to what Hitron wrote in Haaretz this past June, the film doesn’t focus on the question of whether 12, 20 or 200 people were killed in Tantura. This claim is an attempt to flatten and frame the subject, limiting it to debate on a number that is in any event unknown. The documentary tells a much broader story, one that includes the background to the war of 1948 and examines how both personal and national memory are constructed and repressed. It includes different versions of what happened in Tantura, including the accounts of many interviewees who deny that a massacre took place.

In addition to the concealment of the Tantura massacre, the film addresses the concealment of the Nakba as a whole. It outlines the way in which the Israeli establishment constructed its narrative of the period. The film thus provides a unique historical portrait of Israeli society and a rare opportunity to hear the final testimony of members of the 1948 founding generation before their passing.

A documentary film’s main purpose is to stimulate public discussion about important issues. In this regard, “Tantura” had unprecedented success in Israel even before its release in theaters.

Although the film deliberately doesn’t focus on the exact number of villagers who were murdered, we do hear Tuvia Heller, who commanded the squad that came from the north. He claims the Israeli forces didn’t kill a single person in Tantura after the battle ended, and that the stories about a trench that was dug for the burial of 300 people is a myth.

This was also the “official” position of the commander of the 33rd Battalion, Ben Zion (Benz) Priedan. “Twenty to 30 Arab fighters were killed there – only in the battle,” Priedan told Katz.

Mordechai (Motl) Sokoler, a tour guide from nearby Zikhron Ya’akov, accompanied the troops to the battle in Tantura and remained there for several more days to bury at least some of the Arab dead. The soldiers themselves had no way of knowing the exact number of bodies left lying in the field. They departed the area in less than 24 hours, that is, in the afternoon and evening of the day following the battle. That was before all the bodies had been collected and buried.

The work of dealing with the bodies of the dead extended over an entire week. This is clear from various documents available at several Israeli archives. There are written accounts attesting to many corpses scattered around the area: on paths, in houses and on the streets. No one knows the exact death toll.

Sokoler, who was among the very few in a position to know how many bodies were ultimately interred, says many of the dead were buried by him and by residents of the nearby Arab town of Fureidis, who were brought to Tantura for this purpose. Contrary to what Erdinast claimed in Haaretz in January, Sokoler was not senile. In his interview, Sokoler recounted accurately which of the residents of Zikhron Ya’akov accompanied the fighting forces and even which company each one was attached to. With regard to the list of guides from Zikhron, there is complete correlation with Sokoler’s memory and IDF documents from the day of the battle. It can be argued that Sokoler’s estimate of 270 dead was exaggerated, but this wasn’t the claim of someone suffering from dementia.

In the film, and in response to Sokoler, Prof. Yoav Gelber of the University of Haifa says that, as a rule, he doesn’t trust oral testimony from eyewitnesses. He says he didn’t even bother to listen to the soldiers’ accounts from Tantura. He also refers to Sokoler as “crazy.”

On the question of why Israelis are willing to believe oral testimony from Holocaust victims but not from Nakba victims, or why we will accept our soldiers’ oral testimony when it reflects well on IDF history, but don’t credit them when they give accounts, one after another, of war crimes committed in 1948 – I’ll let the readers of Haaretz ponder for themselves.

But why does Haggai Hitron claim that today it’s no longer disputed that 12 or 20 Arabs were indeed murdered after the battle ended? As far as I know, until the release of “Tantura,” representatives of the Alexandroni Brigade veterans organization had never officially acknowledged that anyone was killed following the battle, neither 12 nor 20.

Since the film’s release, it is no longer possible to claim that no one was murdered after the battle ended. Instead, the new strategy of the deniers is to minimize the numbers and claim it was no more than 20. The new line is that these were only sporadic cases that took place “on the fringes of the battle,” as Erdinast wrote. But this isn’t the case, according to the large number of testimonies, coming from both soldiers and residents, that offer different accounts of murder by various methods in various spots around the village.

Contrary to Hitron’s claim, there is no contradiction within the film regarding a mass grave. The documentary presents a recent account from an eyewitness about the accidental discovery in the early 1990s of skeletons in a mass grave, and its covering up with dirt, alongside suspicions that another mass grave had been emptied in 1949.

There are several mass graves, in different locations. The area where it is said that bones were found in the ‘90s is near the beach, behind the house of the Yahya family, which still stands. The large trench from which it’s suspected that skeletons were removed is under the parking lot of Dor Beach.

It seems Hitron is reluctant to delve into maps and aerial photos. By the way, one of the arguments that was offered to disqualify Katz’s thesis was that, “he didn’t bring enough maps.” Nonetheless, when somebody like me comes along with the findings of a thorough investigation that analyzes aerial photos taken over the course of 75 years, the response is to look away – far away.

The trench suspected of being a cleared mass-burial site, visibly open in aerial photos taken in 1949, over a year and a half after the battle, is 35 meters long by 4 meters wide. A mound of soil is clearly visible next to it. As it’s no small matter to advance such a claim, the military aerial photos were carefully reviewed and inspected by five different independent analysts. I sat with these experts, who included senior analysts from the IDF and civilian experts. It was hard for me to believe, too. In the aerial image from 1949, we can clearly see the open trench, which resembles large mass graves known to us from other parts of the world.

It took me some time to come to accept that the contents of this large grave had probably been removed by heavy machinery, and undertaken by either a state or local entity. This is the location of the mass grave described in most of the testimonies. It also corresponds to the description of a mass grave next to the cemetery that appears in a document from the IDF archives.

According to Sokoler, “the gravedigger,” the bodies were placed inside the mass grave in two layers. The details of how to calculate a grave’s volume from aerial photos, in order to estimate the number of dead buried within, I will leave to another article or for an official investigative committee. Those who dispute the film’s findings are invited to hear a detailed explanation from professionals in the field. Needless to say, such critics have never come to any such meetings and have never offered an alternative explanation for why an open trench of this size was visible at the site of burial a year and a half after the battle.

Even without an excavation, the story can be investigated by way of new, advanced technology, such as underground radar. According to the professionals, we’d probably detect an irregularity in the ground and at the very least be able to confirm the volume of the trench that had once been dug there. On the other hand, if we are wrong, and the bones are indeed still there, the radar might well indicate this. To this day, every winter a large puddle forms at the site, indicating an irregularity underground. The locals try to level it off by repeatedly pouring soil over it.

One wonders if the Israeli government will ever approve a serious official investigation into the matter, one conducted by forensic archaeologists and geologists, and not only historians. I’m around – give me a call if they decide to form that investigative committee.

To bolster his claims, Hitron shares with his readers what the historian Benny Morris told him. When I presented Morris with these aerial photos of Tantura, he wasn’t aware that at the time such aerial photographs of Israel had been taken.

Morris also told me that he consulted with an expert at the time of his research, who told him that dead bodies “can’t bloat.” This was his attempt to contradict Sokoler’s account of the graves bulging.

According to Hitron, Morris also argued that there is no documentation suggesting that a mass killing took place in Tantura. This claim is also inaccurate. Although we don’t have access to all the relevant materials in the archives, due to Israel’s policy of limiting access, we do have an interesting document written by the commander of the Naftali subdistrict to the commander of Region 1, where Tantura is situated.

On May 29, 1948, six days after the incident, the subdistrict commander issued the following directive to his subordinate: “1) Make sure the bodies of the Arabs at Tantura are buried and prevent an epidemic. 2) It’s not acceptable that you failed to carry out what you were ordered to do. This time I’m referring to the Tantura plan. By now you should have fully completed.”

What’s the meaning of this memorandum? What is meant by the “Tantura plan,” coming a week after the village was taken and in the context of the burial of bodies? Why was it taking so long to complete their burial? Why was there a fear of an epidemic? The answers seem to be related to the difficulties in burying a very large number of dead Arabs.

We will now turn to Yoav Gelber’s article, published in February on the Hebrew-language website Dyoma. Gelber writes that the Alexandroni Brigade soldiers caused “property damage” in Tantura. The source of this claim is IDF correspondence dated June 1, 1948, when the chief of staff’s office sent a cable to the Alexandroni brigade commander stating the following:

“I was informed by the Department of Arab Affairs that our soldiers who entered Tantura committed many acts of sabotage after [underlined in the original] the conquest and needlessly. Please let me know the extent to which the information provided to me is correct and what you plan to do to prevent such acts in the future.”

The Hebrew word used in the original letter and translated here as “acts of sabotage” is “habalot” – which can be understood in several ways, referring either to damage to property, or bodily damage to people.

Considering the number of people who testified to different killings of groups of men in Tantura after the battle, and the fact that the local commanders were trying, two days prior to this letter, to prevent an epidemic, it’s quite clear that this cable refers to information from members of the Arab Affairs Unit about the horrors they saw; many bodies were still noticeable.

It is very unlikely that the chief of staff’s office, just days after the establishment of the IDF, would send such a rebuke to a brigade commander for damage caused to Arab property a week earlier. This is because of the context of the time: An all-out war was underway, and Arab property was being destroyed on a daily basis on multiple fronts and as common practice. Such a letter and a phrase, when read in context by any honest historian with knowledge of the period and the events, should not be interpreted as referring to property damage. Thus, we have a letter from the office of the IDF chief of staff, referencing the many Arab casualties caused by Israeli forces after the end of the battle of Tantura.

Why did Hitron write that “it’s now known that Amitzur Cohen wasn’t in the battle of Tantura at all”? A quick Google search in Hebrew of “Tantura” + “Amitzur” leads to two different accounts from Cohen, from years before he was interviewed for my documentary.

Amitzur tells how he was with the 33rd Battalion in the Battle of Tantura, even though he was originally from another unit; he’s a native of nearby Binyamina and was in the area. His testimony is available on the website of the National Library of Israel and on the website “gola-tkuma.co.il/.”

In the film, Amitzur talks about the “first months” of the war, a period during which he says he didn’t take prisoners, and instead murdered captives. It’s clear he isn’t talking specifically about Tantura, since that incident took place over a single day. Again, the documentary presents a broad picture and isn’t only about Tantura. I explained this to Hitron in our exchange, but he chose to distort my explanations.

Then there’s Judge Drora Pilpel, who presided at Katz’s trial. Unlike the “silencers” who are unwilling to admit their mistakes years later – and are unwilling to confront the soldiers’ brave confessions of war crimes – Judge Pilpel looks straight into the camera and says, “If Teddy Katz had such materials, he should have continued to fight until the very end of the trial.”

Pilpel even responded briefly, in a letter to this newspaper, to Erdinast’s oped piece, in which he claimed that she had denied during the trial that there had been a massacre at Tantura. Writing that, “Attorney Erdinast provides incorrect information in his article,” Pilpel asserts that she would have never made “any statements during court hearings, including the hearings over Tantura, that could be interpreted as an opinion that skews one way or another.”

I think it takes a great deal of courage and integrity to do what Judge Pilpel did.

Erdinast claims that Teddy Katz’s mistakes weren’t due to carelessness, but were “genuine forgeries.” Has a court ever handed down a decision that supports such a serious accusation? Did any of the committees that examined Katz’s work for the University of Haifa come to such a conclusion? Definitely not.

As attorney Avigdor Feldman explains in the film, those who truly believe in the rightness of their path will seek the opportunity to prove it in court. They won’t fight for the trial to end in a semi-forced compromise or without a full discussion that hears all claims by both sides.

Although the trial was cut short with a hasty compromise, since that time, the “silencers” have continued to claim that the trial “ran its course,” and that it was decided in their favor. In this way, they create a false and misleading narrative. Actually, proceedings ended mid-trial, when Katz signed a letter of concession. Its text was dictated to him.

Katz signed that letter when he was ill, following a stroke, bowing to the pressure put on him by the Alexandroni Brigade, the University of Haifa – and by his own family, which was shaken psychologically and financially from the events. This can only serve as a mark of disgrace on the Alexandroni brigade, the university and the Israeli justice system. The latter denied Katz’s request – made only hours after he signed the letter – to withdraw the letter and resume the trial, this time to completion. In Israel, no one wanted a “Nakba trial.” This is the naked truth.

Returning to Erdinast, who was the lawyer of the Alexandroni soldiers. In his article, he cites the testimony of Shlomo Ambar, a young officer in the 33rd Battalion, later its commander and eventually the head of the IDF’s civil defense unit.

Erdinast writes: “The viewer also doesn’t know that Shlomo Ambar didn’t fight in Tantura at the time that the ‘alleged massacre’ was carried out. Ambar was an explosives officer who only got as far as the village gate, which he blew up without entering the village.”

Here we have a good example of how Erdinast manipulates the basic claim that the massacre took place after all fighting had ended. The blowing up of the chain at the village’s eastern entrance occurred prior to the battle, on the night of May 22-23, and the fighting ended at dawn. There was no fighting on the day that the defenseless Arabs were murdered. That’s the whole point.

Ambar’s account is perhaps one of the most important recorded by Katz. Initially, Ambar tries to distance himself from what happened in Tantura, by saying he was a young soldier, new to the battalion. He indeed says he hardly fought in the battle, and that his only action was to open the chain at the village’s entrance.

But Erdinast neglects to mention what Ambar told Katz later in his recorded testimony. Ambar says he was at the cemetery and at the beach the evening following the night battle and saw, as he says, “anashim metim.” The Hebrew term can mean either “dead bodies” or “people dying.” When listened to in context, Ambar mentions before this sentence how he saw many people being killed in the world mentioning his tour of in Europe in World War II.. Thus it is clear that what he means, when he speaks about the Tantura cemetery, is that what he saw was “people dying.” According to others’ testimony, the cemetery is where groups of men were taken and some of the organized executions took place.

If you listen closely to him, it is clear that Ambar feels guilty and believes he has no moral right to criticize what was done in Tantura since at the time, he chose to avert his gaze and walk away. Ambar tells Katz that even the Germans in World War II didn’t kill Western prisoners of war, implying that this is what his fellow soldiers did to captive men in Tantura.

Inspecting the aerial photos, it’s clear that the cliffs where the chain was opened by Ambar are more than 950 meters east of the cemetery (which is today the Dor Beach parking lot). So it’s obvious from Ambar’s account that he went beyond the “gate at the entrance to the village” and saw what he saw in the cemetery, contrary to Erdinast’s claims.

It’s important to listen carefully to the nuances in Ambar’s voice during his long testimony; what he saw still haunted him decades later. “I want to forget,” he says, his voice breaking. Of course, as usual, people unwilling to hear the truth will succeed. But, if you listen carefully to Ambar’s tormented voice, the intonation, the pauses, you understand the whole story. This is a clear example of why the dry transcripts usually used in the courts and academia are not enough to understand and investigate the whole story.

This is also why those undertaking the Sisyphean task of gathering evidence, as Teddy Katz did and I continue to do, can get to the bottom of things more than those who refuse to listen. Erdinast is trying to silence the discussion about anything that doesn’t align with his sanitized story.

Over the past few months, I have been happy to discover that Erdinast has said on radio and television that people indeed died in Tantura “on the fringes of the battle.” He probably thought up this term because he could no longer espouse the thesis that no one was murdered there.

Here I’ve presented only a few examples of the distortions of the “silencers.” Some of them were connected to soldiers or commented on the incident long before the film was released, and they’re not objective. It would take dozens of pages to refute their other arguments as well.

But no truth is stronger than the body language of the Israeli soldiers who were there, whether they admit to or deny the events of that day that so many want to forget. No testimony is stronger than theirs on the cinema screen. No legal sophistry or academic babble can hide the truth seen in the soldiers’ eyes.

‘Never again’ also applies here

Even if we’re dealing with oral testimonies 50 or more years old, and even if occasionally a mistake was made in collecting and presenting them, any reasonable person understands that something terrible happened at Tantura after the battle ended.

We’ll probably never know the exact number of dead. According to the testimony of a large number of witnesses, the methods of execution included shooting people who were lined up against walls, shooting with a submachine gun into pens where people had been gathered, shooting people in the head from point-blank range with a Parabellum pistol, throwing grenades into a house with civilians inside, burning people alive (including one woman) with a flamethrower. We also know of cases where people were ordered to dig their own graves.

That is only a partial list. Although it wasn’t included in the film, we also have testimony that people were sent to their deaths after being interrogated by the intelligence service of the Haganah. Also, according to eyewitnesses, there were detailed lists of weapons holders in Tantura, and those who kept weapons in their houses were shot after handing them over to the soldiers.

These crimes weren’t committed only by undisciplined soldiers. We have testimonies providing the names of some of the murderers, who were deliberately kept out of the film to protect their families. This also includes a young officer who was later a senior official in the IDF and in the Israeli civil service. The soldiers were not only “Holocaust survivors who just arrived from the camps” or “rogue Irgun members who joined the Haganah forces” after the disbanding of their right-wing underground militia. The killers were what we would consider to be “our good guys.”

Additionally, according to testimony, everyone who was there knew what happened and kept quiet about it.

Israelis should be ashamed of what happened in Tantura. They should also learn a lesson from it: There must never be a second Nakba. The term “Never again” also applies here.

It should be understood that even in the unfathomable context of a post-Holocaust world, the incident in Tantura, and massacres in dozens of other places during the 1948 war cannot be justified. They should no longer be covered up and kept secret.

That said, I personally don’t think the wheel of history can be turned backward. I don’t think the Jews need to give up their place in this country. But I am certain that, three-quarters of a century later, it’s time for us Israelis to be capable of looking in the mirror and realizing that we’re strong enough to recognize the suffering on the other side and to officially apologize for the war crimes carried out by our side during the 1948 war. It would be better for us all if we understood that we must take responsibility for the massive, planned expulsion that took place here, for which the current correct term is “ethnic cleansing.”

We must do this while seeking ways that will allow for a reconciliation and an end to the conflict. Acknowledgment is the basis of everything. Without acknowledgment, the war will continue. We need to come up with new ideas. Zionism must upgrade its operating system if it wants to survive. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean returning the refugees to Tantura and deporting the kibbutzniks of Nahsholim – which now stands on the site of the village. There are other ways.

I believe that the chance to change the never-ending state of war lies first in our ability to tell the truth. We must stop erasing the history and memory of the Palestinian people who share this land with us. We must recognize their right to mourn their catastrophe, even on our national Independence Day (or they can mourn together with us on our Memorial Day). We must recognize their right to wave their own national flag without our feeling threatened.

I’m convinced that if we tell the truth, we can finally emerge from the defensive position into which we’ve dug ourselves over decades. If we do this, we’ll be able to free ourselves to create a better future, one that will include a historic compromise between the two peoples, based on a just division of this bloodied but beloved land.

Israel must acknowledge the Nakba. It’s time for us to stop lying. After we do this and study the Nakba in all our schools and universities, it will be easier to engage in meaningful dialogue with the Palestinians. Only then will we be able to hope that they exchange their dream of a right of return into the State of Israel for significant reparations and a right of return, instead, to the territory of the independent and free Palestinian state that must arise alongside Israel.

Time is running out, and we need to move forward. Zionism today is destroying itself in a rush to a single binational state from the river to the sea. The Jewish state has no future if the oppressive rule over the Palestinians continues and if the land will not be divided to form two states.

As Theodor Herzl said: If we will it, it is no dream.

Alon Schwarz is director of the documentary film “Tantura.”

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