‘We Israelis tell ourselves a sugar-coated story that we did no wrong’

EETTA PRINCE-GIBSON talks to ALON SCHWARZ about his explosive documentary Tantura, about the alleged massacre of Palestinians in 1948, which has provoked debate across the political divide.

Alon Schwarz says his film Tantura is not really about Tantura, the Palestinian seaside village where dozens, and some reports say, hundreds, of Palestinians were murdered in what may have been one of most horrific events of Israel's 1948 War of Independence.

In an extensive interview with The Jewish Independent, Schwarz, 51, the producer and director of the controversial documentary, is articulate, demanding and at times argumentative. "Tantura is not 'merely' about the events that happened there. It's not a [strictly] historical account, although I bring new historical facts,” he says. 

“Tantura is a portrait of Israeli society and the way in which Israel has silenced the facts of the Naqba," he says, referring to the Arabic word for “catastrophe”, used by Palestinians to describe the events of 1948.

"We Israelis tell ourselves a sugar-coated story that we did no wrong," he continues.  "We live in a fantasy world, and we must learn the whole truth.  There was ethnic cleansing, and there were massacres. The Israeli public doesn’t know – or doesn’t want to know.  I didn’t know, either, until I made the movie."

Acknowledging this history, he says, is part of his Zionism, and Tantura is an expression of his "commitment to Israel and the Jewish people".

The village of Tantura was located on the southern Carmel shore on the Mediterranean Sea. The village, with a population of some 1500 residents, was conquered by the Alexandroni Brigade's 33^rd battalion on the night of May 22, 1948.  

In March 1998, Teddy (Theodore) Katz, then in his mid-50s, completed an MA thesis in the department of Middle Eastern History at Haifa University titled “The Exodus of the Arabs from the Villages at the Foot of Southern Mount Carmel in 1948.” His research, based on in-depth interviews and archival documents, led Katz to the conclusion that Israeli soldiers had massacred men, and some women, after the village had been conquered. The thesis received a grade of 97 out of 100, and Katz hoped to pursue a PhD.