Yesterday, the Sundance Festival kicked off, and already on its first day it presented an Israeli documentary, which is also the only feature-length film made in Israel to be accepted for the event. Unsurprisingly, this is a very political and critical text.
This is Tantura, Alon Schwartz’s new docu, which will air later this year on Hot 8. His previous and excellent film, “The Secrets of Ida”, dealt with the legacy of World War II and was a local and international hit four years ago. His new documentary also deals with historical heritage, and this time of the War of Independence.
The film is named after a village located a total of about five kilometers north of Zichron Yaacov. One thing is undisputed: in 1948 he switched from Palestinian to Israeli hands. The debate concerns the way it happened, and the battle has crossed the lines to the academic, media and legal field.
The controversy over Tantura began as a jubilee after 1958. Teddy Katz, a master’s student at the University of Haifa, submitted a dissertation in which he claimed that in taking over the village, soldiers of the Alexandroni Brigade committed war crimes. The work might have remained in the academic ivory tower Its findings, and publicity led to a public outcry – yes, there were such even before the age of social media.
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In a procedure that preceded the “Jenin Jenin” affair a little, the brigade’s soldiers demanded their respect and claimed that Katz had slandered them, and that he had distorted and distorted evidence. The scandal rolled to the Tel Aviv District Court and from there to the Supreme Court. The master was frightened by the situation he found himself in and agreed to compromise and retract the accusations of massacre.
He then withdrew from it as well and sought to rescind the settlement agreement, but it was already too late. In an unusual move, the University of Haifa announced that in light of the methodological errors that were discovered, it was disqualifying the work retroactively.
Schwartz’s film re-examines Katz’s research work as well as the trial that took place around it, and challenges it. According to him, retired judge Drora Pepper did not even bother to hear the recordings that the novice historian had, and she did so only during the filming of the film.
Schwartz, as could be seen in “Secrets of Ida,” is an excellent director, with mastery of the craft of storytelling and adherence to high production values and thorough work. Unlike many previous films of its kind, which made only one voice, he also makes sure to put witnesses and witnesses from the Palestinian side in front of the camera.
Unsurprisingly, and as part of the trend of local bodies moving away from sensitive issues, no local fund has supported Tantura, and yet Schwartz has raised the funds to lift the project. Israeli society and culture and Israeli cinema in particular are world champions in repression, but the director insists here on echoing Yigal Alon’s quote, which appears at the beginning of the film – “a man who has no past, no present, and his future is shrouded in mist.”
Schwartz also tries to be honest, bringing in witnesses who deny that there were war crimes in Tantura and also the position of Prof. Yoav Gelber, who generally opposes basing historical research on the collection of eyewitness and hearing evidence – but he presents all of these as smug and detached. It is clear which side the film is on, and it is clear that he is convinced that the Alexandroni Brigade allegedly massacred unarmed and that one soldier even committed rape.
There is no doubt that for our present and future, we must confront the past. The question is whether Katz’s research is the right starting point for this. After all, the university and the court threw him off all the stairs. Tom Segev wrote at the time in time, not exactly a right-wing newspaper, that his body of evidence “collapsed like Shimon Peres’ election campaign.”
Dr. Ilan Pepe, his chief defense attorney then and in general and here as well, is a very controversial researcher, and not exactly in the forefront of historians. Most of the Jewish artists and intellectuals who claim to deal with the history of the area, he does not master the language of these particular witnesses, so he also did not have the tools to do so.
The film also has far too many talking heads. Some emerge and then disappear arbitrarily. It is also puzzling that some of the Israeli academics speak English to Schwartz. Why them? He and he are Israelis, especially since others speak Hebrew. Shai Hazkani, an Israeli academic who teaches in the United States, speaks Hebrew.
Apart from the academics and the judge, almost all the interviewees here are a founding generation of the state, people who in a few years will no longer have the opportunity to document. Towards the end of the film, a fascinating discussion takes place between some of them over the question of whether the Palestinian heritage should be recognized. Should a monument be placed where the village of Tantura once stood and today Kibbutz Nachsholim sits? The majority opposes, and one suggests that “they put up a sign, as in every hole in Poland there are signs reminiscent of the Jewish past.”
Beyond the fact that the film falls under Godwin’s law, it is also guilty of intellectual dishonesty. How can one criticize Israel for its unwillingness to acknowledge its past, and then give as a role model Poland, which recently restricted by law the right to tell the truth about its past?
If Schwartz had been a master of history, his work would probably have been marked with many remarks in a red marker. In the current cultural climate, it is not certain that it matters. In Israel, labels will be affixed to him without them bothering to watch the film, and in liberal strongholds like Sundance, they will embrace him without asking questions.
Avner Shavit is the film critic of Walla!