In the 1940s, Tantura was an Arab fishing port in Palestine, whose inhabitants could not imagine for a moment the horror that awaited them. This horror is called “the Alexandroni brigade” which, one day in May 1948, in the wake of the founding of the State of Israel, seized the Palestinian village. The tragic fate reserved for the inhabitants of Tantura is the subject of the documentary that Israeli filmmaker Alon Schwarz devoted to this martyred village. Maintenance.
RFI: You started your professional career in IT. What brought you to the cinema?
Alon Schwarz : After a long career in hi-tech, I got tired of it one day. I wanted to do things that really mattered. That’s why, when I had the opportunity to work as a documentary filmmaker, I didn’t hesitate. For eight years now, I have been a filmmaker, documentary filmmaker. I have shot two films so far, one of which tantura. Before starting to work on this film, I was in the process of refining a documentary project on the decline of democracy in Israel. However, one evening, while dragging on Google, I discovered by chance the unusual story of Teddy Katz. This former history student had made several dozen hours of recordings with veterans of the 1948 war and on the basis of the comments made by his interlocutors, he devoted a thesis to the ethnic cleansing that took place in this village. Palestinian, answering to the name of Tantura. Unfortunately, this thesis earned Teddy a defamation lawsuit, the objective of which was to silence him. I called him. He was very warm on the phone and invited me to come see him. That’s what I did. One thing leading to another, I found myself with his recordings that he had preserved. I was so upset by the contents of the tapes that Teddy gave me that I immediately went to my producers to tell them that the subject of my next documentary will not be what was planned. They ended up giving the green light and that’s how tantura was born.
What exactly happened at Tantura in 1948?
No one really knows what exactly happened at Tantura. What I can say, after going through Teddy’s tapes and reading various documents, is that Tantura was once a Palestinian village of some 1,600 souls. It was a fishing village, located on the road that connects Tel-Aviv to Haifa. An important village in the region, Tantura was also a large fishing port, strategically positioned. In the week following the creation of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, an Israeli army brigade captured Tantura. The military conquest completed, the village was emptied of its inhabitants, most of them deported and many others coldly murdered.
Teddy Katz was the first to tell this story, but he remains a controversial figure, accused of attributing to the veterans he interviewed things that they would not have said…
For me, if Teddy Katz is a controversial man, it’s because he is the only one to date who has carried out worthy research on Tantura. He is controversial because he had the courage to recount the drama of ethnic cleansing and deportation that this village, like many other Palestinian localities, experienced at the time. Teddy’s thesis does not fit the largely watered down official narrative of the early Israeli state. You see, myself, I grew up in Israel, in a deeply Zionist family, which had, of course, the heart on the left, but nobody among us mentioned the events that occurred in 1948. We accepted, without the slightest criticism, the official version according to which at the end of the clashes, the Palestinians had made the choice to flee and settle elsewhere, without being pushed by the authorities to leave. Teddy’s courage lay in following his detective instincts to go and interview former Israeli soldiers who had participated in the massacre as well as other actors who witnessed these events. He gave us a dramatic account of the events that took place in Tantura in 1948. In today’s Israel, this version does not have many takers, because it runs counter to the official history has us swallowed. This explains why Teddy has become a controversial figure in his country, especially since he was sued and ordered to retract by signing a letter of apology to the veterans. The court made him out to be a liar. I read his brief, which is several hundred pages long. I found two or three inaccurate quotes there, but that is not enough to invalidate his thesis. In my film, I used the recordings made by Teddy. The words of the veterans are confirmed by the soldiers whom I in turn interviewed again for the needs of the film. My film does not only recount the events that took place in Tantura, which the Palestinians call ” Al-Nakba » or the “catastrophe”, but its real subject is perhaps the fortunes and misfortunes of this historian who was crushed by theestablishment Israeli because he wanted to tell the truth about the violent origins of our country.
Your film stages a gallery of characters: young people, old people, Arabs, Israelis…
Teddy Katz is the main protagonist of tantura. This film also gives voice to former Israeli soldiers to whom I myself spoke. When Teddy interviewed them, they were in their seventies. They are twenty years older today. In 1948, they were part of the Israeli army’s Alexandroni Brigade which was tasked with seizing Tantura. I also spoke to Palestinian villagers who were witnesses and actors in the events. Finally, I interviewed historians on both sides, those who believe that Palestinians were indeed the subject of mass murder and those who do not believe this thesis. For someone like me, who stripped the tapes, there is no doubt about the reality of the massacre. But when I got the tapes in my hand, I didn’t know what I was going to find there. I figured how do I know if Teddy lied or not. However, when I then listened to the recordings which were in Hebrew, all my doubts were dissipated. I understood that these veterans that Teddy was interviewing were indeed talking about organizing a mass shooting, and how to get rid of people once the fighting is over. For me, what was shocking was not that these massacres took place, but that the Jewish state managed to hide the truth for all these years. I made this film to tell the events of 1948 to my fellow citizens who don’t know their own history. This is what really motivated me throughout the filming of this documentary.
The reality of the massacre of the Palestinians is confirmed by the new Israeli historians. Ilan Pappé, figurehead of this school, makes several appearances in your film.
The so-called “new historians” emerged in the 1980s, following the opening in 1978 of the archives relating to independence. They were the first to speak critically of Israel’s history and to draw the attention of Israelis and the world to the dramatic events that accompanied Israel’s independence. There is certainly no consensus among these new historians on the reality of the massacre of the Palestinians, they all consider, however, that the nakba the Palestinians are talking about is a historical moment and not folklore. Ilan Pappé is one of these historians.
Your film is organized like a Greek tragedy where the central action is commented on throughout by a chorus made up of four characters and the dramatic events that are at the heart of the film are experienced as a kind of hubris in action. For the writing of your screenplay, were you inspired by ancient tragedy?
You know, when you’re working on a documentary, you film a lot of people, and then you build your film, so to speak, in the editing room. It’s not at all like in a feature film where everything is scripted in advance. The choir you are referring to is made up of men and women from kibbutz Nahsholim which was built partly on the remains of the old Arab village. The four people we see on screen belong to the generation of 1940, but they have different opinions on what happened in Palestine at the time of independence. It is really through their words that an X-ray of Israeli public opinion is drawn. Their memories, both contradictory and complementary, have a sociological value. That’s why they are there in the film.
How did Israeli viewers react when they saw this film?
tantura opened the American film festival of Sundance, before being projected in Israel within the framework of DocAviv, which is a very famous film festival. The general public could then see it in cinemas and on television. The commercial distribution was not without polemics or controversies, which kept us spellbound for seven months, with an average of one article each week in the press. This has fueled the debate around the violence that accompanied the birth of the State of Israel. I only regret that neither Netflix nor other streaming services were interested in this film. It’s probably because these internet video services fear that a documentary about nakba criticizing Israel’s policies, is not popular with their followers.
You recalled that you were born into a Zionist family, but your ideas have evolved. Do you feel at peace with yourself, after making this film about state lies that condemn consciences to silence?
I was extremely depressed when I was filming tantura, not only because of the shocking testimonies that I discovered, but especially because I realized that the truth had been hidden from me. I still love my country and I remain convinced that Israel has the right to continue to exist, because the Jewish people are inseparable from the history of this land. But my work on this documentary also allowed me to understand that the Israelis will never be able to exist in peace on this territory without acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinians. To arrive at a workable solution, we need two things first: firstlyawareness of the extent of the harm caused to the Palestinian people in 1948 and sympathy with their pain, second, international pressure. I am convinced that in the current state of relations between Israel and the Arab world, without substantial pressure from the international community, it would be impossible to renew the dialogue for a lasting peace. We cannot do it alone.
What does Tantura mean to you today?
In my teenage years, Tantura referred to a beautiful seaside resort. I did not know then that this site once housed a Palestinian village. Today, when I drive my car on the roads of Israel and I see debris and rocks scattered along the highways, I am sad because I know that there were in the past some 600 Arab villages on this territory, now wiped off the map. As a people, it is not enough for us to be sad. We have to face our own demons so that we can imagine a better future. That was my goal in realizing tantura. I hope that the general public will go see this film and that they will try to understand the meaning of my approach.