Janine Quigley, Special to The Denisonian—

On Thurs Feb. 15, the documentary Tantura was screened as part of the yearly Middle Eastern & North African film festival. The 2022 film, directed by Alon Schwartz, examines the massacre that took place in 1948 at the titular Palestinian village. 

In 1947, the British empire – the former occupiers of Palestine, decided to end their colonial project and push forth a UN resolution that partitioned Palestine into two separate states. The resolution, which was strongly opposed by Palestine and other Arab states, dictated that Israel would gain 55% of Palestine’s land. In the following years, Israel would come to occupy 78% of Palestine, ethnically cleanse 530 villages and kill 150,000 Palestinians.

Tantura is just one of the hundreds of villages that was depopulated and destroyed in the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” During the Nakba, over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes, displaced and were prohibited from ever returning. 

Tantura examines one village’s horrific experience, where the coastal village with a population of about 1,500 people was attacked and occupied by a unit of Israel’s army, the Alexandroni Brigade. The film follows former Israeli graduate student Teddy Katz, a man who centered his 1998 thesis on studying the events that transpired at Tantura. After conducting hundreds of interviews with Alexandroni veterans along with extensive research, Katz concludes that there was in fact a massacre at Tantura. It is estimated that upwards of 270 Palestinian civilians were killed and subsequently buried in mass graves.

Tantura director Schwartz dives into Katz’s research, as well as conducting his own interviews with Alexandroni veterans and former Palestinian residents of Tantura. This new evidence corroborates Katz’s initial findings.

Throughout the interviews in Tantura, I couldn’t help but notice a few things. First, Alexandroni veterans who initially spoke candidly about the Tantura massacre recanted their statements in their interviews with Schwartz. Some claimed they were lying or misrepresenting the truth, while others flat out “couldn’t remember.” Schwartz remarked that the veterans could clearly remember what happened before and after the Tantura massacre, but their memory mysteriously failed them when it came to recounting the actual invasion. However, a former Palestinian resident of Tantura remembered the massacre as clear as day. She scoffed at the idea that she could forget or misremember, questioning through tears, “How could I forget?” 

Tantura sheds light on something I choose to call the “privilege of memory.” Among Palestinians and Israelis, who is allowed to forget? Who is allowed to dismissively wave their hand, obfuscate their war crimes, chalking it up to unreliable memory? Why can an Alexandroni veteran remember swimming in the Mediterranean after occupying Tantura, but has nothing to say about the mass graves that were dug? While these veterans, as one put it, “made themselves forget,” what happened at Tantura is a very tangible and very material reality for Palestinians. 

Paradoxically, it seems that Palestinians and Israelis are afforded different privileges when it comes to remembering, too. At the end of the film, Schwartz shows Israeli settlers in Tantura holding a remembrance service to commemorate the Jewish lives lost during the siege. However, when asked if Palestinians have the right to a monument or some other form of remembrance, a Tantura resident shakes her head, saying “they can remember quietly.”

During the post-film Q&A, Dr. Isis Nusair, professor in women’s and gender studies and international studies, stated that we should look at Tantura as a “microcosm.” The village of Tantura being repurposed into a coastal tourist hub grimly reflects a wider issue: the continuation and normalization of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Today, with 30,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since Oct. 7th, Israel has approved 3,300 new settlements in the West Bank while moving forward with plans to reoccupy Gaza. 

The mass grave that was dug for the 270 murdered Palestinians is now a parking lot. Hey, at least the tourists won’t have to walk too far to the beach.