In the Israel-Palestine atrocity doc “Tantura,” director Alon Schwarz gives thorough consideration to the evidence and probable causes for war crimes from 1948 that Israeli soldiers committed in the Arabic village of the movie’s title. Schwarz mostly focuses on testimonials gathered by Teddy Katz, a former University of Haifa scholar who wrote a master’s thesis in 1988 that accused the Israel Defense Forces’ Alexandroni Brigade of the mass execution of 200 Tantura residents.
Schwarz uses new interviews that he conducted not only to support but also to contextualize the damning evidence that Katz gathered over an estimated 135 interviews. Rather than just dramatize Katz’s findings, Schwarz also questions why the surviving Alexandroni vets uniformly refuse to believe Katz.