‘Tantura’ Review: A Documentary Reveals What Really Went on During Israel’s War of Independence
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIf you asked a random group of Israelis and a random group of Palestinians to describe the events that surrounded the founding of Israel in 1948 (chief among them the War of Independence, which lasted close to a year), you’d probably come about as close as you could get to a world political “Rashomon.” The Israelis would likely tell the story of their nation’s founding as a heroic saga of Zionist destiny cloaked in historical justice.
The Palestinians would likely tell the story of how they lost their nation, and would evoke that loss with the phrase they have always used to describe it: The Nakba (“The Catastrophe”).Hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed by the Israelis in 1948, and at least 750,000 Palestinians became refugees.
To this day, however, to utter the words “The Nakba” is a taboo in Israeli society. Alon Schwarz’s documentary “Tantura” explores just why that is.
And it does so by digging into what has been, in Israel (and, for the most part, in the mainstream American media), forbidden territory.
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