Teddy Katz in Tantura (Yonthan Weitzman/Reel Peak Films)

During Israel’s 1948 founding, in an event known to Israelis as the War of Independence, and to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the Catastrophe), hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes, often violently, sometimes lethally.

Director Alon Schwartz’s documentary Tantura is doubly important in how it exposes a horrific and apparent massacre committed by the Israeli Defense Force that year in the beachfront village of Tantura. It points out how the perpetrators have justified it since, and how much of Israeli society is aware of but not fully acknowledging what happened. This film is a bold attempt to confront the past—in all its ugliness.

As pointed out here, many nations were founded on some form of ethnic cleansing. The United States and Australia certainly were, to take two examples. But those countries have, on an institutional level, faced their histories, and tried, however imperfectly, to acknowledge injustice. Figures like Schwartz strongly argue that his has not really happened in Israel, and that it must.

The film revolves around Teddy Katz, an academic who, 25 years ago, wrote a master’s thesis about the Tantura massacre. He interviewed well over 100 people involved in the incident, half of them Jews, half Arabs. He made recordings of all the interviews and received a high grade for his work from the University of Haifa. However, shortly after his paper was published, Katz was sued for defamation by IDF veterans. His 140 hours of recordings—the basis of his work—were never allowed as evidence in court. In this film, the recordings are played extensively, and the evidence is finally given its public hearing that it never before received.

Schwartz also conducts his own interviews with many of the IDF veterans who were in Tantura at the time in question. One of the soldiers, Mulik Sternberg, tells Schwartz matter-of-factly that “The Arabs are an evil, cruel, vindictive enemy.” Of the Tantura incident, Sternberg says simply, “The village was eradicated. That’s it.” Another, Hanoch Amit, says “If you killed, you did a good thing.” Other interviewees believe the soldiers were following the understood, unofficial directives of the primary founder of Israel, and its first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, who wanted the Palestinians to leave the area.

Schwartz travels to the home of Dr. Drora Pilpel, the judge who presided over Katz’s defamation trial in 2000. Schwartz plays her the tapes, which were never even presented in court. She listens to one for the first time, and during one gruesome moment in the recording, her little dog barks in a concerned way. Pilpel laughs and says, “It’s okay Fifi, it was long ago.” She says if Katz had these damning tapes, then he “should have seen it through.” Her attitude is quite telling. She acknowledges the truth of the tapes and seems to understand how damning and horrible the information is, but it’s now not her problem—even though she presided over a case that destroyed Katz’s career and reputation. The cognitive dissonance here is both astonishing and typical.

This cognitive dissonance becomes evident throughout—it happened but it didn’t happen—and is deeply rooted in in many of those interviewed. The film more than implies that Israelis won’t be able to make real progress with the Palestinians until the past is meaningfully addressed. In this way, Tantura is a bold and essential step in this direction.