Tantora

Tantoura Massacre – A Mass Grave:

If one considers the details of this massacre committed by the Zionist forces against the inhabitants of the village of Tantoura, the ugliness of the atrocities overshadows those of Deir Yassin.

The importance of this massacre lies in that it was uncovered by an Israeli researcher named Teddy Kats, a lecturer at Haifa University. Since, he was subjected to harassment and had received numerous death threats in addition to being forced to appear before Israeli courts.

We hereby present the details of this massacre committed in May 1948 relying mainly on the study prepared by Dr. Katz who uncovered it 52 years after its commission. It was indeed published in full by the Israeli paper, Ma’ariv:[i]

“These scenes shall never be forgotten by Fawzi Mahmoud Ahmad Tanji (Abu Khaled). Fifty-two years after the ordeal, he goes numb whenever he recalls how his entire family and friends have been massacred before his own eyes. “They took us to the village’s cemetery where we were made to stand in line; the Jewish commander ordered his soldiers to ‘take 10’. They selected 10 from amongst us and took them close to some cactus trees and shot them dead. They returned and took another 10 and the massacre continued”.

Abu Khaled adds:

“These soldiers, whom I will never forget their features as long as I live, appeared to me like angels of death; as I stood there, I was certain that I was living the last seconds of my life and that they will soon pick me .. Jews are duty-bound to take example of what the Nazis did to them; I don’t know why they did to us what the Nazis did to them?!”.

The 74-year-old Abu Khaled suddenly bursts in tears: “It would have been far better for me to have died rather than carry this terrible ordeal with me all these long years”.

Those implicated in the Tantoura massacre, and ironically even its Arab victims, or the survivors among them, have opted to suppress these terrible events deep down in their inner self; that is, until an Israeli researcher uncovered it.

Rizq Ashmawi (Abu Saed), who today resides in the village of Al-Faridis, was only 13 at the time of the massacre. He recalls:

“Not far away from the village mosque there was a small yard. The Israelis gathered around 25 young men, lined them up, and opposite them they stationed between 10 to 12 soldiers who simply opened fire, killing all 25 of them”.

Ashmawi further recalls how he had gone with a Jewish soldier to get some bread, saying:

“As we returned using the sea shore path, we found around 40 to 50 corpses. Women were desperately trying to cover their children least they be killed. My own mother was almost killed that day. When we were about to leave towards the cemetery, my mother suffered a seizure and couldn’t walk. We begged the soldiers to take us by car but they responded: ‘there is no need, we will kill her and relieve you of her’. A heated exchange ensued between us and the soldiers and we were subsequently spared”.

Ashmawi believes that the massacre resulted in over 90 killed. Men were buried in two pits while women were buried in a third smaller one.

2-9-1- A Bloody Pursuit in Search of Young Men

Teddy Kats, 56, a Meguil Kibbutzim and a Meretz member, has devoted 2 years trying to establish contact with anyone who was present in Tantoura on the eve of May 22/23, 1948.

He spoke to scores of people who were displaced; some currently reside in the village of Al-Faridis, while others were expelled outside the country (some live in Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, Syria). Katz also spoke to soldiers from the Alexandaroni Brigade, Unit 33, aka “The Saturday Brigade”, since this very Unit had a new mission assigned to it every weekend. The researcher also spoke to residents of “Zakhron Yacoub”, a neighboring village to Tantoura.

In compiling his report, Katz also consulted and inspected the Israeli Army’s Archives and has unequivocally concluded that

“what happened in Tantoura on that May 1948 evening was a massacre at a mass scale”.

Katz writes: “On the evening of May 22/23, 1948, Unit 33 of the Alexandaroni Brigade assaulted the village of Tantoura; within hours of heavy fighting, the entire village fell in the hands of the Israeli Army”.

According to over 20 testimonies and to others from members of the Brigade, for hours soldiers have chased the village men intending to kill them. At the beginning, soldiers fired at men wherever they found them, at homes, yards, even in the streets … then they started chasing men in the village’s cemetery.

In occupying Tantoura, 14 Alexandaroni Brigade soldiers were killed. The village’s cemetery was later converted into a car park for “Dor Beach” resort on the Mediterranean south of Haifa. A number of displaced Palestinians painfully told the researcher: “We have even been denied and deprived from visiting the graves of our loved ones”. Abu Khaled comes every now and then to visit the ruins of his village; he straddles the ground and bursts into painful tears.

2-9-2- They Shot Them and They Fell into Their Graves

• Abu Khaled says: “They gathered us near the sea shore, men on one side and women on the other. Children 12 and above were ordered to join the men while those under 12 joined the women; and then the selection began. Seven to ten men were picked up and taken to the village mosque where they were executed. The killers returned and took another batch, and the massacre continued. In all, around 90 were thus executed. Then they took all who had remained to the cemetery. As they were about to commence the killing, around 50 to 60 people from “Zakhron Yacoub” Kibbutz arrived at the scene. The second they comprehended what had happened, a number of their senior officials intervened and averted the massacre”.
• A similar testimony was conveyed to the Israeli researcher from Abdul Razzaq Al-Yahya (Abu Anas), a top Palestinian security official, who in turn had heard from a family member who was in Tantoura on that eve. Abu Anas told Dr. Katz: “They gathered all the men at the cemetery and divided them into batches of 6 or 7. Every batch was ordered to dig a pit in the sand. As soon as they finished they were lined up at the edge of the pit and shot dead; automatically they would fall in their own dug graves”.
• Abu Anas continues: “At one point, two of my brothers who were in two different batches hugged each other before their turns were due. At that very moment, a Jewish man riding a motorbike arrived at the scene. He was carrying an order from his Command to stop the massacre”.

Apparently, Abu Anas contends that “the Jewish Command feared the possibility that similar measures might be taken against Jewish prisoners in the custody of Jordanian troops”. Abu Anas believes the death toll to hover around 78.

• Another testimony of what Israeli soldiers have perpetrated was provided by Abdul Rahman Dansh, age 75. While digging what later would be his grave, he saw soldiers laughing and exchanging jokes among themselves.

Dansh adds: “After every spree of shootings and executions, the soldiers would exchange remarks and crack jokes. I couldn’t understand what they were saying since I didn’t speak Hebrew. However, a friend of mine who speaks it told me that they were saying “look at these fools who are digging their own graves”.

Dansh further states that he and his friend decided to slow down the digging. A short while later, he saw a Jewish man known to him. He pleaded with him to intervene to save his life, which he did. Both Dansh and his friend were set free.

2-9-3- Mass Killing

Shlomo Amber, who at the time was 25, worked as a Commanding Officer at Unit 33. In his testimony before the researcher, he stated: “My mission was to detonate a bridge connecting two sandy banks of a valley. However, I spent the entire day at Tantoura and witnessed events I’d rather not speak of”.

“After a long pause”, Katz writes in his report, “the officer spoke”. Amber said: “I joined the British Army out of conviction that it was the duty of every Jew to fight the Germans … but we ended up fighting in Tantoura. It is my duty to state that even the Germans didn’t kill unarmed prisoners, who were all later repatriated safe and sound; however, here in Tantoura, we killed our Arab prisoners”.

He adds: “It was not possible to portray what had happened as aiming towards regaining national respect; moreover, I do not think that the number of victims who fell at Tantoura was large enough to push people to a wave of outrage and resentment. We simply set to occupy a distant village that does not fall on any major transportation network or at any major crossroads; this was an anomalous phenomenon with a distinctive import.

We did have a face to face confrontation; however, the images indelibly printed in my mind are of the cemetery where I saw a large number of corpses. It was then that I decided to leave the place when I saw the soldiers killing, killing and killing. Hence, I don’t know how many killers were there”.

Last week however, Amber, who worked as the Head of Civil Defence and resigned from military service after reaching the rank of Major-General, retracted from his statements arguing that what Katz had written was not accurate:

“I haven’t mentioned anything about Nazi soldiers nor did I talk about killing prisoners. I find it unwise to say so. I feel angry when I read what neo-historians (revisionists) are writing on the killing of prisoners. May be they mixed things up”.

Amber adds to Ma’ariv: “I am not willing to corroborate inaccurate stories. True, people were killed at Tantoura; but mass killings? What is mass? People died during battles and may be after, but I do not wish to comment on that. Today, after I’ve reached this age I do not wish to comment on what I have done when I was 25”.

There is no doubt that the research entitled “The exodus of Arabs from the villages of Southern Carmel in 1948” represents an explosive material. Katz himself admitted that he had second thoughts before embarking on his research. He thought that certain issues were better left unturned. He wrote in his research,

“There are considerations which are tantamount to unleashing bears in a jungle. Examining sensitive issues might place so many soldiers of all ranks who took part in the 1948, as well as the civilian leadership, in an ethical dilemma. Fifty years after the events, at a time when conditions were radically different; a different interpretation now would cast a bad image on an entire generation of the Israeli military”.

At one of the walls in “Zara’s” family home hangs the image of a hundred civilian women and children surrounded by Israeli military police, a few meters away from the glass factory awaiting their expulsion from their village. Underneath the photo, the owner of the house wrote the inscription (caption) “Tantoura Catastrophe, August 22, 1948 – Memory and History”.

Ahmad Saleh Zara (Abu Suhail), who died 8 months before the publication of Kats’ report, and his wife, Muyassar, had so many beautiful memories before the village’s occupation. Katz has met Abu Suhail months before his death where he told him: “Our village was much more beautiful than Haifa in many respects. Now there exists ‘Haponeim Settlement’ and ‘Mayan Tseifi and Majan Mikhail Kibbutz’”.

Abu Suhail adds: “Until the war, we had lived with Jews and cooperated with them in many spheres. However, when the war erupted, residents of ‘Zakhron Yacoub’ kibbutz tried to convince Tantoura villagers to surrender and hand in their weapons. It was obvious that the village could not withstand the ferocity of the attack; however, the village’s brave defenders refused to even consider the idea of surrender”.

“When the battle started at around midnight”, Abu Suhail continues,

“Soldiers started shooting sporadically at anyone they laid their eyes on; it was something akin to Hitler’s wars. Heaps of corpses in the streets; it was a horrific scene. When we were ordered to move from one place to another, we had to tread on corpses. When the battle was over, they gathered all the remaining villagers and started transferring them to the village cemetery for their execution”.

2-9-4- Mass Grave

Katz has also met Raslan Hassan Ayoub Omar, (Abu Hassan) two years ago in a refugee camp in Tulkarm where he currently resides. Abu Hassan stated: “A State that is founded on the basis of crime is undoubtedly doomed; a State that is founded on the basis of justice is a perpetual one”. This was uttered by Abu Hassan, the 75 year old elderly, after all his attempts at avoiding meeting Katz had failed.

• After calming down, Abu Hassan continued: “After they had occupied the village, they gathered us near the seashore; they picked 7 of us and I was one of the 7 and asked us to collect the corpses. While doing so, I noticed two corpses in the middle of a cactus bush, so I was reluctant to go there and fetch them as they were full of thorns. At this stage, a soldier pointed his gun at me and ordered me to grab the bodies. Naturally, I had no option but to do so”.

“In all”, Abu Hassan continues,

“We collected some 60 to 70 bodies, and may be more, I cannot recall exactly. At that stage, a wounded soldier came forward and told the guards that he wanted to execute two of us in revenge for his wound. He pointed his finger towards me and another standing next to me. The guy standing next to me was totally oblivious to what was happening since a while ago he had carried the corpses of his two brothers. He stepped forward about a 100 meters and was shot dead by the soldier. As for me, I failed to move forward and got away (luckily), in that they didn’t shoot me”.

“Women and old people were transferred to Al-Faridis village after being stripped of their valuables and jewelry”, Abu Hassan said. “Any one between 10 and 100 years of age was taken to prison; first they were taken to Zakhron Yacoub then to “Umm Khaled”; others were taken to faraway places, as for me I languished in jail for 11 months”, Abu Hassan concluded.

• Mohsen Murie is a domicile of Al-Faridis and was 17 years at the time of the massacre. He was amongst those who were given the task of burying the dead. He states:

“We arrived two days after the massacre to bury the dead. I had laid between 40 to 45 bodies in one grave and another 42 bodies in another mass grave; in a third grave, I laid another 9; there was another grave where 3 women were buried”.

2-9-5- The Clique are Professional Killers

On May 27th, 1948, a few days after the battle of Tantoura, Neftali (Tolek) Makobski, a member of Unit 33 which carried out the attack noted the following in his diary:

“What I have learnt here is that soldiers are professional killers. Some Jews were killed at the hands of Arabs; these killings were personally avenged by the soldiers. I felt that they were retaliating against what has been accumulating in their inner self for long. They felt much better after doing what they had done”.

According to Katz, Makobski, who recorded the above in his diary, was killed in the battle of “Sheikh Mo’nes” on June 1st, 1948.

Something Abnormal at Midnight

Another witness, Mustapha Al-Masri (Abu Jamil), 65, I have met in Al-Faridis while on his way to prayer like many others. He was not so keen to talk to me but at the end he stated: “At midnight I heard something strange, I was 13 at the time. I went straight to my parents and inquired but was told that probably it was a row between our neighbors”.

According to Abu Jamil, his father was not quite content with the explanation he has just given, so he asked his family members to stay and went out to see for himself what was taking place. He soon realized that the whole village has been overrun by the Israelis. He asked his friends who were staying over at his home to stay with him. He had many Jewish friends and was hoping that some would come to rescue him and his family. A Jewish soldier who knew the family well did indeed come. Abu Jamil’s father told him “You know us for over 20 years”; however, the soldier replied “Don’t you dare say something like this; I don’t know any of you”. Abu Jamil’s father responded painfully, “If this is what you say, then I don’t want anything from you”.

Soon after, the soldier left and assigned the house to another. The new soldier asked Mustapha and another sick guy to leave the house. Seconds after they did and around 15 meters away from the door steps of the house, a huge explosion took place. The entire family of 12 has been killed.

Abu Jamil also spoke of another Jewish killer who was roaming the streets shooting sporadically at pedestrians, hours after the battle had ended. David Shelli pleaded with him to stop shooting unarmed civilians like birds; after a long heated argument, he did.

2-9-6- They Were Slaughtered Inside Their Homes

A third location where people from Tantoura were slaughtered, in addition to the cemetery and the streets, was inside their homes while soldiers were searching for weapons. Eyewitnesses testified that every youth arrested was subjected to interrogation regarding weapons found in his possession. However, after the interrogation was over, only soldiers came out of the houses; the occupants didn’t; they were all slaughtered.

The massacre continued for hours on end. The couple Zara told Katz:

“The residents of Zakhron Yacoub came to rescue us in the last minute. A heated discussion ensued between them and the soldiers. They stood as a barrier between the soldiers and Tantoura’s inhabitants insisting that no soldier could lay a finger on us. Had they been 15 minutes late, it would have been over.”

Muyassar added: “When they asked us to leave the house, we passed by a large number of corpses; women were overcome with emotions and started weeping uncontrollably. The soldiers forced men to line up like a herd waiting to be slaughtered. Then they collected the corpses in a few meters’ heap, and then shoveled them into a mass grave using a crane. I am certain their intention was to annihilate the entire village; but such was prevented by the inhabitants of Zakhron Yacoub”.

2-9-7- I Am Not a Killer and I Have Nothing to Hide

One of the Jewish leaders interviewed by Katz in the course of his research is called Murdachi Sockolor, an 80 year old resident of Zakhron Yacoub. He led Alexandaroni Brigade’s raid at Tantoura in 1948. He stated: “We advanced towards the village and suddenly we heard bullets being fired, so we started shooting in all directions since we could not establish the source”.

The following day, Sockolor states that he saw tens of corpses in different locations in the village, and adds:

“We dug a huge pit across the railroad and placed the corpses there as we found them, fully clothed, with the help of some seven of the residents of Al-Faridis. The faces of the dead Arabs were all covered with Kufiyyas (the Palestinian headdress). There was no official record of the number but I recall around 230”.

Kats observes that this testimony does not conform with that of another witnesses’, namely, Abu Fahmi’s, who testified that he recorded the names of the death in two note books, and his total was much less than Sockolor’s. However, such discrepancy could be explained in that Abu Fahmi’s numbers covered only those who fell at the day of the raid, while other numbers included those who fell in the few days that followed the initial raid.

Sockolor recalls the formation of a huge “Mountain of Death” a couple of days after the burial due to the corpses’ inflation in the mass grave. The “Mountain” only subsided two weeks later.

Sockolor’s conscience is at peace regarding what took place in Tantoura. “I am a fighter”, Sockolor states 52 years later,

“And what happened took place in the course of battle. We were fired at and we responded by firing in all directions since we didn’t know where the source was. I am not a killer and I have nothing to hide”.

He further adds that no massacre took place inside the houses and at the cemetery as the refugees maintain”.

However, Katz wrote in his report that Sockolor, just like many other witnesses before him, was not present in the location where killing was taking place in the other side of the village.

2-9-8- In Search for Potential Justifications

Katz attempted in his research to look for and comprehend the motive which led members of Alexandaroni Brigade to behave the way they did. One likely justification claims that the brigade’s members were in a state of shock prior to their raid at Tantoura, since a week before two of their comrades were killed in a car…

In his attempt to look for other justifications, Katz approached Al-Hanan Anani, who was 20 at the time and had joined the Brigade. Anani had migrated from Germany 15 years before escaping from the Nazis, along with his family.

Unlike other soldiers of the Brigade who made no mention of mass killings, Anani told Katz:

“Believe me, this issue of what took place at Tantoura has been causing me much anxiety. It is possible that what happened was linked to the fact that a week before the operation we had lost a large number of our most distinguished colleagues in the battle of Kafar Saba. This might have caused soldiers to enter the Tantoura battle with vengeance”.

Anani added that in a number of Units, including his, soldiers were thirsty for blood and hence it was hard to control them. “In addition, there were no clear policy guidelines pertinent to shooting people after their surrender”.

• Reserve Liwaaaa, Bents Freidan, another commander of the Tantoura operation, and later a Commander of the Alexandaroni Brigade, asserted that a large number of Arabs have been killed at Tantoura.

“This is war, and in war, especially if the theater is a residential area, people die. When you confront your enemy, with no badge on him stating that he does not intend to kill you, you kill him. Based on this, we roamed the village from one street to another, and so many people were killed”.

Freidan strongly rejects testimonies that a massacre took place in the cemetery or inside the homes.

• Abraham Amber, who was a member of the Brigade and is 73 today, was somewhat reserved. “Every now and then there is talk of how Jews killed Arabs; why don’t they investigate all the killing that Arabs committed against Jews”.

2-9-9- Other Testimonies

In the course of the trial of Israeli researcher, Teddy Katz, before the Tel Aviv Central Court, a number of Palestinian eyewitnesses (from Tantoura) appeared to testify in support of Katz’ assertion that a massacre did indeed take place. One such witness was Fawzi Tanji, 73, from Tulkarm refugee camp, who gave evidence before the court, stating:

“They gathered us at the beach and separated men from women; then they divided us into batches of between 7 and 10 and shot them. They killed 90 of us”.[ii]

• Meanwhile, Alexandaroni Brigade Commander stated before the court, that nothing of the sort took place.
• Other members of the Brigade had sued Katz accusing him of slander, defamation and forging their testimonies and claimed compensation in the amount of 101 Million Shekels.
• A number of Palestinian institutions operating in the 1948 territories (Israel proper) and among them the Refugees Committee, have all expressed their support for Katz, while other liberal Israeli institutions have expressed their belief that putting Katz on trial is tantamount to a gag.

Katz was defended by renowned attorney, Afigdor Feldmann, who stated that there are other testimonies, not included in the report, that support the assumption that a massacre did indeed take place. It’s worthwhile noting that Katz had conducted his research as part of an academic requirement at Haifa University.

2-9-10- The Elderly Buried Their Sons in a Mass Grave

• Seventy-year old refugee, Kassem Mohammad Ahmad Obeid, from Jenin refugee camp, still carries the scar of a gunshot he received in 1948, and specifically during the battle of Tantoura.

In the course of a seminar organized by the Palestinian Cultural Directorate to commemorate the 53^rd anniversary of the massacre, Obeid spoke of his now destroyed home village, Kafer Lam, near Haifa, which was destroyed by Zionist gangs after killing the majority of its inhabitants and expelling the rest.

Obeid, who currently lives in the Jenin camp with his children and grandchildren, started by pointing to his village, which lies some 21 km south of Haifa. At the eve of the (nakba), Kafer Lam’s population numbered around 400 belonging to 10 families. They relied for their livelihood on agriculture as they used to supply Haifa, Jaffa and Acre with cucumber, for which their village was renowned due to the abundance of water.

Education started early on at the mosque before a school opened which covered 1st to 4th grade. After that students would have to transfer to Tantoura School.

In so far as transportation was concerned, Obeid said:

“It was easy to go to Haifa using public transportation. Buses used to depart from Tantoura to our village via Ain Ghazal and then on to Haifa. This was convenient for those who sought medical treatment at Rambam Hospital in Haifa”.

Obeid then moved to narrate the nationalist role assumed by his village, stating:

“Kafer Lam has been subjected to a number of strict military sieges during the British mandate period (the 1936 Revolution) and to intolerable harassment and collective punishment. However, this did not stop its inhabitants from supporting the revolutionaries”.

As for the villagers’ relationship with the Jews, Obeid noted that it was normal until the end of 1947, when Jewish gangs started exerting pressure on the inhabitants with the aim of expelling them from their village. When Jewish gangs finally attacked the village, unarmed inhabitants were forced to flee to Ain Ghazal, Ajzam and Al-Faridis. These three villages later became hotbeds for confrontations with armed Jewish gangs backed by British troops, who didn’t hesitate from using their air force to strike them, killing in the process; many homes were destroyed.

When he started talking about the Tantoura massacre, Obeid lifted his right arm to show a gunshot wound that he sustained during the battle in the defence of Tantoura. “Jewish gangs”, Obeid continued,

“laid a siege on Tantoura from the north and started bombarding the village from land and sea before invading it and desecrating its mosque. Then they called upon its inhabitants, using loud speakers, to vacate their homes and march towards the sea. It was there that Zionist gangs executed the massacre”.[iii]

Obeid adds:

“Zionists were selecting individual Palestinians, grouping them in batches of 10s, then forcing them to go away from the congregation’s sight, force them to raise their arms and face the wall before executing them. They would then force the elderly to carry their bodies and lay them in a mass grave dug by bulldozers. This scene continued more than ten times”.

Obeid was among one of the last batches to be executed. He, along with others, was saved by the intervention of the mayor of “Zamarin” Settlement who had maintained good relationship with the villagers. The survivors were transferred to a detention camp in the City of Umm Khaled, currently, Netanya. After a year in jail, Obeid managed to escape towards Qalqiliya, then to Nablus and on to Jenin.

What rejuvenated Obeid’s rich memory, was that he was testifying along with his peer, Yousef Al-Haj Daoud who stated:

“When we ran out of ammunition and specifically on July 25th, 1948, the journey of dispossession and dispersion has begun. We moved towards Jenin and, using Iraqi vehicles, we went to Baghdad, where we were housed in Qarrara Schools District for two months”.

Daoud continues: “We stayed for one whole year in the Barracks of the British Army in Basra. Then we petitioned the Iraqi officer in charge of refugees to allow us to return to Palestine. Our petition was approved and we (around 170 refugees) were transported to the Jordanian border and on to the West Bank, minus some 30 refugees who went to Syria”.

2-9-11- Beni Morris Testifies

Israeli Army Spokesman, commenting on the massacre as presented by Dr. Katz stated:

“In the light of the information in the possession of the Israeli Army, there is nothing to indicate that a massacre was committed against the inhabitants of Tantoura at the time of its occupation in May 1948”.[iv]

Palestinian historian, Walid Al-Khalidi, states:

“The village of Tantoura was one of the last villages in a streak of coastal villages, extending from Zakhron Yacoub, south of Haifa, to Tel Aviv, that was not occupied by the Israelis.

In May, a meeting took place between local intelligence officers of the Hagana Gang and Israeli experts in Arab affairs to decide Tantoura’s fate and other nearby villages. The decision was made, according to Israeli historian Beni Morris, to ‘either expel the inhabitants or subdue them’”.

In the book entitled “The History of the War of Independence”, it was stated that

“The decision was executed in Tantoura two weeks later on the eve of May 22 / 23.

Unit 33 of the Hagana and Unit 3 of Alexandaroni Brigade started the raid and “the village fell after a short battle”.

Maurice writes:

“It was clear that the commanders of the Alexandaroni Brigade wanted the village vacated from its inhabitants, and that some of those inhabitants were expelled”. In an Israeli military communiqué issued on May 23rd, 1948, and quoted in the New York Times, it was stated that “100s of Arabs were rounded up and a huge amount of bounty were confiscated”.

The newspaper’s correspondent also made mention of Hagana’s somewhat dubious claim, namely, that the village was a conduit for Egyptian volunteers, coming from the sea. However, Tantoura villagers’ ordeal didn’t end with their expulsion; some went to the Triangle while some 1,200 others were transferred to the nearby village of Al-Faridis, which had previously fallen.

Towards the end of May 1948, the Israeli Minister of State, Beikhor Shatrit, asked the Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion: “Should the residents of Tantoura be also expelled from Al-Faridis?”. Morris points out that “most of the residents were indeed expelled in the summer from areas under Israeli control, and that some 200 people stayed in Al-Faridis, mainly women and children”.

[i]. Teddy Katz, Maariv Newspaper, 19/1/2000.

[ii]. Al-Quds Newspaper, 26/12/2000.

[iii]. Al-Ayyam Newspaper, 24/6/2001.

[iv]. Al-Dustoor Newspaper, Jordan, 20/1/2000.