Details of a 1948 massacre revealed
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 1/19/2000

A new study presented to Haifa University revealed details of a massacre that the Israeli army carried out in the process of taking over the village of Tantura, near Haifa back in 1948.

The study, by Teddy Katz as part of his Masters thesis, is based, among other things, on testimonies of Palestinian refugees from the village and of Israeli soldiers who took part in the attack. It showed that in the course of capturing the Arab village of Tantura in 1948, soldiers of the "Alexandroni" Brigade massacred the men of the village. The study uncovers a series of horrific acts, including the shooting of villagers in the streets, in their homes, and en masse, in groups of six to ten, in the village cemetery. Over 200 dead were counted at the village and buried in a mass grave in what is today the parking lot of the Dor beach.

"We were taken to the village cemetery, where we were formed into lines. The commander of the Jews came and told his soldiers to pick up ten of us. They chose ten, led them to the cactus bushes and shot them. Then they came back and took another ten. They had to get rid of the bodies and afterwards shot them too. Then they repeated it. They shot more and more people," Fauzi Mahmoud Ahmed Tanji, 74, today a resident of Tulkarm on the West Bank said. Tanji spoke of those crucial moments of his life as he watched the soldiers shooting his fellow villagers. "These soldiers, whose faces I will never forget, seemed to me to be the ghosts of death. While I was standing there, I was sure that these were the last moments of my life. I felt they were about to take me out in a few more seconds. The Jews must have learned from what the Germans did to them. I don't know why they did the same thing to us. It would have been better for me to die there and not carry this story with me to this day."

Another eyewitness who was interviewed by the researcher was Razek Ashmawi, known as Abu Said, who lives in the village of Faradis, some 20 kms south of Haifa. "There was a plaza not far from the mosque. Not far from there, they lined the boys up along the walls of the houses. There was a line of about 25 people, and the girls behind them. Ten or 12 soldiers stood opposite, and they simply shot the boys, who fell on the spot." Mustafa Masri, Abu Jamil, 65, testified that 12 of his family members were shot near their home. He said that the Jewish commander walked the village streets and just shot the people he saw."

Colonel Bentz Pridan, who commanded the takeover of Tantura, was eventually appointed commander of the brigade in appreciation of what his troops did in the village. Interviewed by the researcher, he confirmed that many Palestinian villagers were killed during the takeover but he gave his own reasoning: "It was war. And in war, especially the kind that takes place in urban areas, people get killed. When you see the enemy opposite you, he doesn't have a note saying that he doesn't mean to shoot you. When you see him, you shoot him. That's how we went, from street to street, and that explains why a lot of people were killed."

Previous Stories:
  Mahmoud Darwish's speech at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of al-Nakba (the Catastrophe)   (5/14/1998)
  Memories of a 1948 survivor   (5/12/1998)
  Kufr Qassem 41 years later: survivors recall the cold-blooded massacre   (4/9/1998)

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