On page 17, Kovalik quotes an account from Al Jazeera:

The Al Jazeera account goes on to cite a 1948 report from the British delegation to the United Nations, which describes the events in greater detail. Prominent American Jews including Albert Einstein responded by writing an open letter to The New York Times condemning the massacre and protesting the visit of Menachim Begin to the United States. Begin, then head of Israel's Freedom Party, had led the Stern Gang. Kovalik reproduces this letter in full.

Tantura was a village of approximately 1,500 Palestinians within the territory given to Israel by the UN Mandate in 1947. According to testimony, the village was attacked by the Alexandroni Brigade of Israel's Haganah. Between 40 and 200 people were killed and buried in a mass grave. Survivors have said that the attack occurred after the village had surrendered.

Surviving women, children, and elderly were moved to the nearby village of Furaydis, also under the control of the Alexandroni Brigade. Males were placed in prison camps, and later allowed to leave Israel's territory with their families in prisoner exchanges.

Historian Walid Khalidi, acknowledging the fragmentary nature of individuals' testimony, published work on this mass grave in 1961. Further testimonies were published in the 1998 thesis The Exodus of the Arabs from the Villages at the foot of Mount Carmel, submitted by postgraduate researcher Theodore Katz to the University of Haifa. Additional tens of interviews were published in the Summer 2000 issue of Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, a quarterly of the Journal of Palestinian Studies. Muhammad Abu Hana, who was child at the time of the events in Tantura and now a displaced person in the Yarmouk Camp, recounted:

Veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade later challenged Theodore Katz's conclusion that extrajudicial killings had occurred at Tantura. In a settlement, he agreed to rescind that conclusion. However, Ilan Pappé supported Katz's original conclusion, pointing out that it was based on oral-history evidence not only from Palestinians but from Israeli soldiers. Pappé published in 2001 a report from the Alexandroni Brigade to IDF headquarters that also supported this conclusion.

Israeli historian Benny Morris reviewed the Tantura controversy in 2004, noting that Palestinian survivors interviewed all said that a massacre had occurred, while Alexandroni Brigade veterans denied it. Morris concluded that there was evidence of war crimes, rape, and looting on the part of some soldiers.

In the 2022 documentary film Tantura by Alon Schwarz, several Israeli veterans testified to witnessing a massacre at Tantura. Other interviewees disagreed. In 2023 the Palestinian NGO Adalah commissioned the Forensic Architecture research unit at Goldsmiths to undertake a comprehensive investigation, including three mass burial sites.

The Middle East Monitor explains the background of this event. As it explains, on March 29, 2002, Israel launched its biggest military operation since the 1967 Six-Day War in order to put down a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank, which was provoked when "then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon stormed into Al-Aqsa Mosque protected by heavily armed Israeli police and soldiers." The Monitor continues:

According to Anton Salman, a member of the Antonius Society humanitarian group in Bethlehem, "the Palestinians facing the advancing Israeli army 'saw their mosque, Masjid Umar, on the other side of the square from the Church of the Nativity, bombed. They were afraid, and they looked for a place to be secure. So they found the only way; they ran to the church and found a place to stay.'"

While spokespeople for the Israeli government claimed that Israeli forces were under strict orders not to attack the Church of the Nativity—an incredibly important holy site for Christians dating back to 326 years after the birth of Christ—this order, if really given, was not followed. Thus, Israeli snipers shot into the church at anyone in view. In addition,

The targeting of Christians in Gaza has continued into the Israelis' operations there, even triggering the ire of the Vatican. Thus, as CNN reported, on December 16, 2023, Israeli snipers shot Christians sheltering in the Holy Family (Catholic) parish in Gaza City, killing two women (an elderly mother and her daughter) and wounding seven other individuals.

CNN quoted a report by the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem who oversees Catholic churches throughout the region as saying, "No warning was given, no notification was provided. . . . They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish, where there are no belligerents." The Latin Patriarchate reported that "Israeli Defense Forces tanks also targeted the Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa, which houses fifty-four disabled people and is part of the church's compound. The building's generator, its only current source of electricity, as well as its fuel resources, solar panels, and water tanks were also destroyed." According to the Patriarchate, "IDF rockets had made the convent 'uninhabitable.'" Pope Francis, during his weekly Angelus Prayer in Rome, denounced these attacks against unarmed civilians as "terrorism."

"For his part, Hamman Farah, a psychologist now living in Toronto and a relative of Nahida and Samar who were murdered in the Holy Family Parish, was quoted as saying: "This is a targeted death campaign during the Christmas season on the world's oldest Christian community."

And indeed, the facts appear to back up Farah's claim. Thus, a report in Politico exposes the fact that the Israeli Defense Fores (IDF) knew exactly what they were targeting when they attacked the Holy Family Parish and the Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa. This is without a doubt because Israel was informed of these sites, and the need to protect them, by none other than staffers of the US Senate. As Politico explains, emails

In short, the IDF knew full well that they were targeting Catholic sites that US Senate staffers asked them to make sure they did not strike, and they struck them anyway.

Another despicable act carried out in the West Bank was in the Ibn Sina Hospital in the Jenin refugee camp. On January 30, 2024, armed Israeli soldiers—dressed as medical staff and civilians, with some pretending to carry babies—entered the hospital and murdered three young men while they were sleeping. One of the men killed was eighteen years old and paralyzed. While Israeli officials claim that these men were terrorists who were themselves planning an attack, it is clear that they could have apprehended these individuals and tried them upon such allegations. Instead, the IDF terrorized the occupants of the hospital and carried out a cold-blooded killing.

As the Arab News explained, "Philip Lazzarini, the agency's commissioner general, said that although the agency notifies Israel of all aid convoys and coordinates with authorities on their movements, they continue to come under fire. . . . 'We cannot deliver humanitarian aid under fire,' the agency said." The whole point is to prevent humanitarian aid from being delivered.

Indeed, the Associated Press reported on February 9, 2024, that Israel was intentionally blocking a UNRWA shipment of food bound from Turkey for the people of Gaza. As the AP explained, "That stoppage means 1,049 shipping containers of rice, flour, chickpeas, sugar, and cooking oil—enough to feed 1.1 million people for one month—are stuck, even as an estimated 25 percent of families in Gaza face catastrophic hunger." Scores of Israeli citizens have been happy to help out this mission by blocking aid trucks attempting to get into Gaza.

In addition, Israel has punished some countries that have refused to go along with the decision to cut off aid to UNRWA, for example by bombing Belgium's Embassy in Gaza shortly after Belgium announced that it would be continuing funding to the agency.