Over 90 years old, several former soldiers of the Alexandroni brigade admitted that they committed a massacre in Tantura and described some of its scenes, which infers that the death toll is much higher to the 20 confirmed by the Army at the time.
Former Israeli soldiers confirmed the massacre committed in 1948 by the troops of the nascent Jewish State in the Palestinian coastal village of Tantura and recounted new facts about it, the Haaretz newspaper highlighted.
In an article published in that newspaper, historian Adam Raz quotes participants in the massacre.
With more than 90 years, several former soldiers of the Alexandroni brigade admitted that they committed a massacre in Tantura and described some of its scenes, which infers that the death toll is much higher than the 20 confirmed by the Army at the time. , he pointed.
“It was a silenced topic. It is forbidden to talk about it because it could cause a scandal. I don’t want to talk about it, but it happened,” admitted ex-combatant Moshe Diamant. The ex-soldier revealed that after the confrontation the residents of the town were shot.
Haim Lavin, for his part, highlighted that another soldier advanced towards “a group of 15 or 20 captives and killed them all.”
Micha Vitkin recounted that an officer killed one Arab after another with his pistol because “they refused to reveal the location of the remaining suspected weapons hidden in the village.”
Until just over two decades ago, it was believed that the massacre carried out in April 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, was the most serious committed by the Israelis during the war.
It is estimated, according to various sources, that between 107 and 120 Palestinians were killed there.
However, 22 years ago, the then Israeli student Theodore Katz investigated the events that occurred in Tantura as part of his doctoral thesis and denounced that some 200 people were massacred there. Historian Benny Morris later raised the figure to 250.
