http://www.acrossborders.org/NewAB/Categories/Nakba/Massacres/Tantura.htm

Posted: August 31, 2000  

Palestine Report, January 26, 2000. 

FOR THE RECORD

This week Palestine Online interviews Teddy Katz, a student at Haifa
University, whose newly-released research on the village of Tantura
unearthed evidence of a long-ago massacre of 90 village inhabitants by
Zionist soldiers.

PR: Would you describe for us the events of the massacre at Tantura?

Katz: There were killings inside homes, in the cemetery, and on some of the roads
leading to the village. They took every man alone to his house in the company of an
officer and made him hand in his weapon. Then they killed each person inside his
house. In the cemetery, there were 8 to 10 soldiers in charge of the massacre. The soldiers
made people stand in lines of six and forced them to dig their own graves. Then they
shot them. They captured more than 90 people, but 90 were surely killed inside the
cemetery. 

PR: Who killed these villagers?

Katz: One person I know of for sure is Shimshon Masbitsh, an army officer from "Shay"
who accompanied the operation. I can't guess who among the officials in charge of
killing the 90 people were with him. Khaled from Tulkarem told me, along with another
person, highly ranked in the Palestinian Authority nowadays, Yasser 'Abd al-Razzaq
Yehya, that his eleven brothers and sister and his father and mother were there and
narrated the massacre of Tantura from the beginning to the end. They did not say
whether the "Alexandroni" squad or others who came with Masbitsh were the ones who
were shooting.

PR: How did you choose this topic, and how did you get started?

Katz: Actually I started searching for something else, about Haifa, and they told me at
the University of Haifa that they already have enough research on the city. But I insisted
that my research should concentrate on Haifa since I loved the city where I grew up. I
started looking up the neighboring villages of the city. My aim was to do something
about Palestinians, as there is already a lot on the Jewish community. I did not ever
dream that I would come up with this...

I investigated the villages of Tiret al-Karmel, Hud, the three small villages of
al-Muthallath, Kafrin, and Samreen and Tantura. Whenever I asked about this last village,
people turned their backs. I went to some acquaintances in Wadi 'Arah, and each time
they told me about a "horrible massacre."

PR: How did you reach the people involved?

Katz: One of the villages I investigated is Jet. The wife of the local council head is from
the village of Ijzem and that's where I started. These people advised me to interview
somebody in Fradis village, which is three kilometers from Tantura, who left Ijzem two
or three months before May 15, 1948. He knows some people from Tantura and sent me to
Fawzi Qanji in Tulkarem - at the time of the massacre he was in the northern post of the
village.

None of the few Palestinian fighters were inside the village. He narrated how they fought
and were killed. He was the only survivor of eight in his post. There were another 16
fighters in the east among the rocks and that was the only line of defense in the village,
one kilometer away. There was no serious resistance and no fighters were inside the
village.

PR: Were those in charge of the massacre Jewish citizens or soldiers? Did they act by
themselves or under orders? 

Katz: No, not at all, they did not act by themselves, there were orders and I think they
were soldiers from "Alexandroni." They were directed soldiers from the group that
usually comes after a battle to restore order to the place.

PR: How did the massacre end?

Katz: The first narration states that a group of Jewish people headed by Ya'qouv, the son
of the leader of Zikhron Ya'kov, arrived at the village and threatened Shimshon with
guns to stop the massacre. They were familiar to the local Palestinian residents and used
to host them at their houses in summer.

The other narration claims that Ya'qouv was not a hero, but that a person rushed into the
village on a motorcycle and handed the soldiers an order to stop the massacre
immediately on May 23, 1948 because there were some Jews from Jerusalem and Gush
Etzion captured by Palestinians and therefore they were afraid of retaliation. That assures
that the massacre was stopped in the cemetery, but tens were killed on the roads leading
to Fradis as people claimed it was very difficult to walk on these roads because of the
number of corpses.

I intended to contact somebody called Mordechai Sokelyair. He was one of the trackers
who led the Division A to Tantura - the division that entered the village and controlled
the situation. He also counted the dead people and buried them and was astonished that
the total number was close to 200 odies. I did not meet him because he is suffering from
severe [heart problems] and his wife feared he might experience the shock once again. 

PR: What has been the Israeli reaction to the revelation about the massacre?

Katz: I don't know. Today they do not remember what they did. They are too busy with
the teacher's strike, the Nimrodi trial, and now the Weizman affair. They don't like going
back fifty years. I can't make noise about it on my own, but if the international media
regularly demanded and insisted that this is an important event, they might respond. 

-Published 26/1/2000 (c) Palestine Report