Tantura’ Massacre Another Evidence of the horror of the Israeli occupation of Arab Palestine.

Tantura’ Massacre

Another Evidence of the horror of the Israeli occupation of Arab Palestine.

Quoting on Ha'aretz newspaper.

Written in English by Naser Sarhan

Ha'aretz: Mass grave of Palestinians found on Caesarea beach.

The Hebrew newspaper Haaretz on Friday revealed a mass grave of Palestinians martyred during the 1948 war on the beach of the famous city of Qaisaria, in northern occupied Palestine, and the newspaper noted that there were "mass killings of Arabs that occurred after the surrender of the village of Tantura", in 1948.?Haaretz reported that a documentary by Alun Schwartz, entitled "Tantura", will be screened next week online, containing testimonies of Israeli soldiers who participated in the massacre.

According to the newspaper, some 200 Palestinians were buried after being executed in a mass grave currently located under the "Dor Beach" parking lot.?

Palestinian historians had documented the Tantura massacre on the night of May 22-23, 1948.?"This is the first time that testimonies have been conveyed about Israeli soldiers who were present during the massacre, as well as the first time that the mass grave site has been spoken of," she said.?According to Haaretz, the uproar over the truth about what happened in the village of Tantura began 22 years ago, following a master's thesis written by an Israeli graduate student named Theodore Katz, which included testimonies about the atrocities committed by the Iskenderun brigade (Haganah) against Arab prisoners of war.

She explained that student Katz, the author of the thesis, retracted his account after former Haganah soldiers filed a defamation suit against him.?However, the newspaper stated: "Now, at the age of 90 and above, a number of former soldiers of the Israeli Army Brigade have admitted that a massacre had already taken place in 1948 in the village of Tantura

The soldiers' testimonies come in Schwartz's documentary "Tantura", which will be screened soon, Haaretz said: “Former soldiers describe different scenes in different ways, and the number of Palestinian villagers shot dead cannot be determined, and the numbers resulting from testimonies range from a handful killed to dozens”.

"According to one of the testimonies of a resident of Zakhron Yaacoub (a city in northern occupied Palestine) who helped bury the victims, the death toll exceeded 200."?"The villagers were shot dead by (a savage) with a machine gun, at the end of the battle," said Moshe Diament, a former soldier.

On the defamation suit filed against Student Katz, he said: "They kept it quiet, (they said) we shouldn't talk about what happened, it could cause a complete scandal." According to the newspaper.?Haim Levin, a former soldier, said that "a member of the unit went to a group of 15 or 20 Palestinian prisoners of war and killed them all."

In subsequent years, “An officer became a senior man in the Ministry of Defense, killed using his own gun too many Arabs," said Mika Vicon,?Another former soldier, who was not named by the newspaper, said: "It's not good to say that, in fact, they put them in a barrel and shot them all in the barrel. I remember the blood in the barrel," he said, adding, "They simply didn't act like humans in the village."."

The documentary "Tantura":

The documentary "Tantura", which includes these previous testimonies, Haaretz noted that it will be screened twice next week, online as part of the “Sundance Film Festival” in Utah.-USA.

Haaretz described the film by director Alun Schwartz as "an impressive documentation project".?"Although the testimonies of the soldiers in the film were given in broken sentences, in parts of the confessions, the overall picture is clear: Israeli soldiers in the Iskenderun Brigade slaughtered unarmed Palestinian men after the battle ended."

The location of the mass grave and testimonies and documents Schwartz collected for his film indicates that after the massacre the victims were buried in a mass grave, which is now under the "Dor Beach parking lot," Haaretz reported.

"The grave was specially dug for this purpose, and the burial lasted for more than a week," she said.

At the end of May 1948, a week after the occupation of the village, two weeks after the declaration of the Israeli state, one of the leaders appointed to the site was reprimanded for not properly dealing with the burial of Arab bodies. "On June 9, the commander of the nearby base stated: "Yesterday I examined the mass grave in The Tomb of Tantura. I found everything in place."

"In addition to testimonies and documents, the film presents the extraction of experts who compared the aerial photographs of the village before, and after its invasion," the paper said.?She said: "Comparing images, and using 3D imaging using new tools, makes it possible not only to locate the exact location of the tomb but also to estimate its dimensions: 35 meters long, 4 meters wide.?"They took care to hide the mass grave, in a way that would make future generations walk there without knowing what to step on," Katz said in the film.

"The horrific events in Tantura will not be fully investigated, nor will the full truth be known."?"However, one thing can be confirmed with great certainty: under the parking lot of one of Israel's most beloved and familiar Mediterranean resort sites, there are the remains of the victims of one of the most glaring massacres of the War of Independence."?According to Palestinians, armed Jewish groups carried out numerous massacres in Palestinian villages during the 1948 war to force their residents to leave.

Palestinians call these events the "Nakba" which means in English “Catastrophe”, which has displaced Palestinians from their villages and towns.

"The events of the Nakba of Palestine and the subsequent displacement of the Palestinian people were a major tragedy, as they represented and continue to be an ethnic cleansing process, where an entire people were destroyed and expelled and groups and individuals from all over the world replaced," the Palestinian Statistics Center said in a report published in May.?"More than 800,000 Palestinians were displaced from their villages and towns out of the 1.4 million Palestinians living in historic Palestine in 1948 in 1,300 Palestinian villages and cities."