One down two to go as far as these quote. Do you have a disclaimer as well about the 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed?
As for Katz, he is a member of Gush Shalom, Uri Avnery's organization, and knowing his honesty, I still wonder about this Tantura incident. As you know, there has been considerable misinformation propagated by Israel to play down them down or deny them. In fact, the most disingenuous observer of the Hakba, Weisel, still insists that Arab radio created it even though the British, who monitored radio communications, found no such broadcasts exhortating Palestinians to leave their villages.
Are you claiming along with Weisel that the Nakba did not occur? That 10 thousand Palestinians were not killed in its wake?
Additional information about Tantura:
Click on one or more of the below hyperlinked eyewitness names to read their corresponding testimony about the mostly unknown massacre at Tantura:
This site is a Palestinian one and may be biased, but the testimonies deserve consideration as there are so, so many. Link here:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa /al-Tantura/Story560.html
The witnesses are:
· Muhammad Abu Hana · Muhammad lbrahim Abu' Amr · Salim Zaydan Umar al-Sarafandi · Amina al-Masri (Umm Mustafa) and Tamam al-Masri (Umm Sulayman) · Farid Taha Salam · Musa ' Abd ai-Fattah al-Khatib · 'Adil Muhammad al-'Ammuri · Mahmud Nimr 'Abd al-Mu'ti · Muhammad Qasim Daqnash · Rahma Salih Abu Salim · Yusuf Mustafa al-Bayrumi · Ali Mustafa al-Bayrumi · Yahya Abu Madi · Yusuf Salam · Muhammad Kamil al-Dassuki · Abd al-Razzaq Nasr · 'Abdallah Salim Abu Shakar · Sabira Abu Hana · Yusra Abu Hana · 'lzz al-Din al-Masri · Wurud Sa'id Salam
Example testimony:
Muhammad Abu Hana, born in 1936, resident of the Yarmuk camp. We were awakened in the middle of the night by heavy gunfire. The women began to scream and run out of the houses, carrying their children, and gathered in several places in the village. I went out of the house too and began running around the streets to see what was going on. Suddenly a woman shouted to me: "Your uncle is wounded! Quick, bring some alcohol!" I saw my uncle bleeding heavily from the shoulder. Being young, I was unconscious of danger. I grabbed an empty bottle and ran to the dispensary nearby. Zahabiyya, the nurse, was there. She was one of the Christians of the village. She filled the bottle with alcohol and I ran back to my uncle. The women cleaned the wound and took my uncle to our house where he hid from the soldiers in the grain attic. But the soldiers saw the trail of blood and soon burst in, asking my grandfather where my uncle was. My grandfather said he didn't know. They left but came back several times with the same question. At some point my uncle, who was in pain, asked for a cigarette and my grandmother gave him one. When the soldiers came back again the smell of the tobacco guided them to him. They took him away. On their way out they insulted my grandfather and called him a liar, and he answered back that anyone would protect his own son. My uncle survived thanks to the intervention of the mukhtar of the Jewish colony Zichron Yaacov. He had good relations with my grandfather, who was the mukhtar of Tantura. At 9 in the morning, the shooting stopped and the attackers rounded everyone up on the beach. They sorted them out, the women and children on one side, the men on the other. They searched the men and ordered them to keep their hands above their heads. Female soldiers searched the women and took all their jewelry, which they put in a soldier's helmet. They didn't give them back when they expelled us towards Fraydiss. During the entire operation, military boats were offshore. On the beach, the soldiers led groups of men away and you could her gunfire after each departure. Towards noon we were led on foot to an orchard to the east of the village and I saw a bodies piled on a cart pulled by men of Tantura, who emptied their cargo in a big pit. Then trucks arrived and women and children were loaded onto them and driven to Fraydiss. On the road, near the railroad tracks, other bodies were scattered about. Muhammad lbrahim Abu' Amr, born in 1935, resident of the Yarmuk camp. We had gathered at the center of the village, in the house of Hajj Mahmud al-Yahya. When the village fell and the soldiers entered, they herded us to the beach. On the way, near the house of Badran on the street leading to the mosque, I saw the bodies of seven young people from the village. A woman, 'lzzat Ibrahim al-Hindi, started to scream, but a burst of gunfire silenced her for good. This woman was the mother of the martyr Abd al-Wahhab Hassan Abd al-Al, who had been killed during an attack with explosives by the Jews of Haifa at the end of 1947 (*). When they loaded us onto trucks, we saw bodies piled along the road like stacked wood. A woman recognized her nephew among the dead--it was Muhammad Awad Abu Idriss. She started to scream. She didn't know yet that her three sons had met the same fate. Her sons, Ahmad Sulayman, Khalil, and Mustafa, had been killed, but we only learned this later, in exile. But the mother always refused to believe it, and insisted that they had escaped to Egypt and would come back to find her one day. She spent the rest of her life waiting for them.
Muhammad Abu Hana, born in 1936, resident of the Yarmuk camp.
We were awakened in the middle of the night by heavy gunfire. The women began to scream and run out of the houses, carrying their children, and gathered in several places in the village. I went out of the house too and began running around the streets to see what was going on. Suddenly a woman shouted to me: "Your uncle is wounded! Quick, bring some alcohol!" I saw my uncle bleeding heavily from the shoulder. Being young, I was unconscious of danger. I grabbed an empty bottle and ran to the dispensary nearby. Zahabiyya, the nurse, was there. She was one of the Christians of the village. She filled the bottle with alcohol and I ran back to my uncle. The women cleaned the wound and took my uncle to our house where he hid from the soldiers in the grain attic. But the soldiers saw the trail of blood and soon burst in, asking my grandfather where my uncle was. My grandfather said he didn't know. They left but came back several times with the same question. At some point my uncle, who was in pain, asked for a cigarette and my grandmother gave him one. When the soldiers came back again the smell of the tobacco guided them to him. They took him away. On their way out they insulted my grandfather and called him a liar, and he answered back that anyone would protect his own son.
My uncle survived thanks to the intervention of the mukhtar of the Jewish colony Zichron Yaacov. He had good relations with my grandfather, who was the mukhtar of Tantura. At 9 in the morning, the shooting stopped and the attackers rounded everyone up on the beach. They sorted them out, the women and children on one side, the men on the other. They searched the men and ordered them to keep their hands above their heads. Female soldiers searched the women and took all their jewelry, which they put in a soldier's helmet. They didn't give them back when they expelled us towards Fraydiss. During the entire operation, military boats were offshore.
On the beach, the soldiers led groups of men away and you could her gunfire after each departure. Towards noon we were led on foot to an orchard to the east of the village and I saw a bodies piled on a cart pulled by men of Tantura, who emptied their cargo in a big pit. Then trucks arrived and women and children were loaded onto them and driven to Fraydiss. On the road, near the railroad tracks, other bodies were scattered about.
Muhammad lbrahim Abu' Amr, born in 1935, resident of the Yarmuk camp.
We had gathered at the center of the village, in the house of Hajj Mahmud al-Yahya. When the village fell and the soldiers entered, they herded us to the beach. On the way, near the house of Badran on the street leading to the mosque, I saw the bodies of seven young people from the village. A woman, 'lzzat Ibrahim al-Hindi, started to scream, but a burst of gunfire silenced her for good. This woman was the mother of the martyr Abd al-Wahhab Hassan Abd al-Al, who had been killed during an attack with explosives by the Jews of Haifa at the end of 1947 (*).
When they loaded us onto trucks, we saw bodies piled along the road like stacked wood. A woman recognized her nephew among the dead--it was Muhammad Awad Abu Idriss. She started to scream. She didn't know yet that her three sons had met the same fate. Her sons, Ahmad Sulayman, Khalil, and Mustafa, had been killed, but we only learned this later, in exile. But the mother always refused to believe it, and insisted that they had escaped to Egypt and would come back to find her one day. She spent the rest of her life waiting for them.
Since the Israeli courts are biased, it would not be a good idea to close the case on the basis of their rulings. We can agree on this, I hope. The High Court alone is so ethnocentric that its rulings are totally unpredictable.
