Agnotology in Palestine/Israel

Since premiering at Sundance in January 2022, the documentary Tantura has sparked debate. At its center is the “Teddy Katz affair,” when a Jewish Israeli student used oral history in his master’s thesis to revisit the massacre in the village of Tantura during the 1948 War. The thesis was annulled because of external pressure and a libel suit more than two decades ago. At first blush, here was an opportunity for reckoning with and confronting past wrongs, yet in the event, this documentary reveals not what took place in Tantura in April 1948 but the enduring Israeli refusal to listen to Palestinian voices. In the movie and the press, Israeli historians, activists, and politicians debate among themselves whether we have sufficient evidence to determine if atrocities were committed seventy-four years ago. What this debate brings to the surface are the modes of settler history writing and silencing—the power dynamics that tie history to the society that produces it and the state it wishes to justify.