What: Tantura Massacre
When: 22-23 May 1948
Where: Palestine
What Happened?
A week after David Ben-Gurion, the executive head of the World Zionist Organisation, declared the establishment of the State of Israel, the small coastal village of Tantura became the scene of one of the worst massacres carried out by Zionist colonial forces against the indigenous Palestinian population. The massacre took place against the backdrop of what the Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe which saw 750,000 Palestinians, nearly three quarters of the population, being driven out of their homes by Zionist paramilitary groups. The catastrophe is now the longest running refugee crisis in the modern era.
By the beginning of May 1948, Tantura was one of the last remaining Palestinian villages on the stretch of the coastal plain south of Haifa to Tel Aviv. It had a population of 1,500 and like many Palestinian villages scattered along the cost thrived in an economy based around fishing and agriculture. The village was assigned to Israel under the controversial 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine. It was not until six months later that the full extent of the terrible fate inflicted on Tantura by the international community would be known.
On 9 May, members of the Jewish terrorist group Irgun, which bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem two year earlier backed by the Haganah, held a meeting to decide what to do with the handful of villages scattered along the coast. Before turning their attention to unarmed villagers in Tantura, the Haganah and the more extreme militant Zionist terrorist organisation the Stern Gang were part of a brutal military campaign which led eventually to more than 600 Palestinian towns and villages being razed to the ground. Dozens of massacres were carried out during the “Plan Dalet” campaign, including one in Deir Yassin, six weeks before Israeli soldiers swept through Tantura.
The Haganah’s Thirty-Third Battalion (the Third Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade) attacked the village, killing up to 200 Palestinians. The massacre took place during the night and lasted several hours, according to Palestinian witnesses. Their accounts of the massacre by Israeli forces have been documented. According to some sources, as many as 300 Palestinians are said to have been killed.