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Poster for Tantura

Tantura

2022 · Film · documentary · 95 min

Directed by Alon Schwarz

DocumentaryHistory

When, in the late 1990s, Israeli student Teddy Katz exposed the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the village of Tantura, in May 1948, during the first Arab-Israeli war, he was initially praised for his pioneering work; but he was soon infamous and branded a traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges that corroborates Teddy's findings.

5 positivefrom 5 commenters

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6 comments on Hacker News

  1. PositiveGrimblewaldApr 18, 2026

    The whole movie is worth a watch. It was made by Teddy Katz, an Israeli student whose 1990s thesis on the massacre was discredited after legal action by veterans, largely baseless push-back against the thesis which was well researched and strongly supported by primary evidence. The movie is called "Tantura" and was released in 2022. IF you're not an AV person, the wiki on the tantura massacre is worth a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantura_massacre

  2. PositivevFunctAug 1, 2025

    Palestine never attacked Europe. European Jews attacked Palestine and started killing Palestinians to remove them in order to create the state of Israel. They invaded with boatloads of weapons brought in from Europe, starting in 1947 before the state of Israel even existed.

    And they were doing the same stuff back then as they are doing now, such as burning children alive, as witnesses recalled during the Deir Yassin massacre, as well as rapes of Palestinians, as their own soldiers recalled. (see the amazing "Tantura" documentary describing war crimes committed by the European Jews during the Nakba)

    Israel never won this war they started. They never got Palestine to surrender. This is why their homes are required to have bomb shelters, since all the Israeli colonists are living in an active war zone from a war they started.

  3. PositivestanfordkidMay 24, 2024

    Not really. It’s absurd to draw the line into ancient history of Arab’s colonizing the Levant. Early 1900s to 1948 are more reasonable given that people actually exist that lived in this time or at least meaningful records of history.

    The fact is the British/UN gave a bunch of land to people that wasn’t really theirs to give. Nakba happened (which is illegal to even talk about in Israel) which was already a mass genocide/forced displacement). People alive today saw this happen. Watch the documentary Tantura to see some of the horrors by early Israelis (rapes, torture, killing people and feeding them their own genitals).

    The point is: throughout most of modern history “Israel” has been invading Palestine. The fact that the UN recognized Israel in 1949 doesn’t matter… because that recognition required mass displacement and horrors to actually materialize.

    Arab wars etc are a consequence of this. Sure maybe Israel won some of those. But one has to accept that the very conceptualization of Israel is rooted in genocide and displacement from the start. Many (or maybe most) states throughout history were formed this way I guess … Israel had the bad luck of doing it during a time that the human rights and morality of modernity was beginning to fully form.

  4. PositivestanfordkidJan 27, 2024

    It's kind of funny reading HN comments comparing this to WWII. Israel was given the land after WWII as some sort of weird hand washing by western governments. People already lived there. The claims that Hamas is like "Germany" trying to eliminate Jews are laughably absurd. These are people without a military fighting with AK-47s and rocket launchers against one of the most sophisticated armies on the planet -- F-35 jets and laser guided munitions. How can we blame Hamas when it is Israel that is stealing Palestinian homes to add Jewish settlers? Imagine someone coming to your house with a bulldozer kicking you out and placing new people there. This is literally what a settlement is and it is condemned by most of the UN outside of the United States.

    It is also important to remember that Israel did not exist before 1948. There was a lot of violence that occurred against Palestinians during it's formation -- within 2 generations of the current generation -- rapes, murders, displacement. I recommend watching the documentary film Tantura which outlines some of this. There is some pretty horrific stuff... 70 year old Israeli men laughing about old stories of raping women. Feeding men their own cut-off genitals etc. There is a reason the "Nakba" is not allowed to be mentioned in Israel.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16378034/

    There also seems to be only a very basic understanding of the political realities behind why Hamas exists in this forum. "Big bad boogeyman Islamic terrorists" vs "Secular free modernity" is a stupid way to look at this. The Israeli government does not want a Palestinian state. Hamas was very much uplifted by the Israeli government since as early as the 80s because they delegitimize the idea of a free Palestine in the international sphere. They are easy to negotiate against because they are extremists. Even given their extremism, Hamas does not want to "genocide Jews" -- this is another absurd claim that is propagated but has no basis.

    Hamas is also not ISIS. They are a resistance movement against an occupying power that uses violent means to influence political realities. This is dirty dirty work and many horrible things happen when you give 20 year olds AK-47s. I don't support it. But the existence of Hamas is very much an expected outcome of military occupation. It is interesting to note that the founder of Hamas was 8 year old when he saw 15 Palestinian men executed at point blank range by Israeli soldiers. He is also a pediatrician and a geneticist.

    In general, I think people on this forum view terrorism through a very childish lens. It's a bit like calling everything a "programming language" ... well yeah maybe C++ has some similarities to Typescript ... but they are very different beasts. Osama bin laden and Hamas may have shared political objectives and ideals but they are not completely equivalent.

    To summarize my feelings: Israel has definitively built a great civilization -- but we musn't equate that with some sort of moral cleanliness. Hamas is a terrorist organization -- but we musn't equate that with a lack of real grievances.

    The statistics don't lie: Israel has killed more women and children in 100 days than any other recent modern military conflict. It has used more munitions than the US did for the entirety of the Iraq war. It's a ridiculous response that, given the context above, is nothing short of genocide.

  5. PositiveabusadaDec 8, 2023

    In order to be able to live together we need to learn our history, and of course being Palestinian myself i am biased, but I think the Israelis in particular need to learn their history, have you watched the documentary Tantura btw? you can find it here https://archive.org/details/tantura_2022.

    Israel needs to first admit that it's establishment was on the expense of another people that are still suffering until today, without that, it's difficult to move forward, as well as continuing this conversation.

    > Don't you think it may be useful to use a different slogan from the people who mean and do that?

    Maybe, I don't know what else can it be! the slogan is not calling for killing anyone, FREEDOM = Dignity, Human Rights, I personally just want to be able to go to the beach and travel from an airport nearby.

    > But we can't. There won't be a one-state solution that satisfies everyone....

    Why not?

    >The right of return for every descendant won't work

    Why not?

  6. PositivesndmanJan 12, 2023

    > In 1948, Palestinian irregulars led by Amin al-Husseini, who had been The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spied for he Nazis and was a guest of Hitler's in Berlin during WWII and who organized SS troops for he Nazis from Bosnia, as well as 5 Arab nations all sought to destroy Israel. They lost.

    That narrative has been debunked by historians (both Arab and Israeli) for quite some time. I would encourage you to look at recent documentaries (Tantura (2022), Blue Box (2021), etc.). These run counter to the Christian Zionist narrative promulgated by a strong (and very well funded) Israeli lobby.