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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.
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