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.

Source: palestineremembered.com