Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

In 1999-2000, Israeli scholar Teddy (Theodor) Katz wrote his graduate thesis on the May 1948 invasion of the Arab village of al-Tantura, interviewing several surviving soldiers from the Alexandroni brigade who participated in the invasion.

In the 2022 documentary Tantura, Israeli director Alon Shwarz interviews Katz (among others), revealing what happened to his thesis. After publishing his thesis, Katz was sued by some of the Alexandroni soldiers for libel. The judge, Drora Pilpel, never gave him a chance to present his case or play his recorded interviews. Katz was then pressured late one night by a group (including judge Pilpel) to sign an apology letter without his attorney present, stating that no massacre occurred in Tantura. He later said this was the biggest mistake of his life. Only hours later he asked to retract his signature and continue the trial, but judge Pilpel refused. Teddy's master's thesis was then removed from academic libraries. His lawyer said it was Katz against a whole group that wanted to bury the trial, and perhaps bury Teddy too. A University of Haifa professor pointed out that Hitler's Mein Kampf was in the university libraries, and that universities are supposed to support academic research/debate, not silence them.

So what happened in Tantura? Several of the Alexandroni soldiers directly admitted in the documentary Tantura to murdering a large number of civilians and unarmed fighters in this village—or witnessing others in their unit committing these murders—then burying them in a mass grave. One of them said that Katz had told the truth and had he testified in support of Katz’s thesis, Teddy would have received his degree. But "the guys"—Henio, him, and others—denied it, but "of course everyone knew, everyone knew" that it had happened.

Katz: "To this day, the vast majority of what happened in 1948 is not only hushed up but also destroyed."

"I think the self-image of Israel as a moral society is something I haven't seen anywhere else in the world,” said University of Haifa professor Ilan Pappé. How important it is to be exceptional. We are the Chosen People. This is part of the Israeli self-identification as a very superior moral people. I grew up on this 'the most moral army in the world'. And I think it's very hard for Israelis to admit that they commit war crimes. […] The project of Zionism has a problem. It's a tragedy in a sense. Jews had to escape from Europe to find a safe haven, but you cannot create a safe haven by creating a catastrophe for other people."