Alexandroni Brigade - Katz Controversy

Katz Controversy

In 1998, Teddy Katz wrote a master's thesis at Haifa University arguing that the Alexandroni Brigade committed a massacre in the Palestinian village of Tantura during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The veterans of the brigade sued Katz for libel. During the court hearing Katz conceded by issuing a statement withdrawing his own work. He then tried to withdraw his statement, but the court disallowed it and ruled against him. A committee at Haifa University found problems with the thesis and ruled that it: "failed at the stage of presenting the raw material for the reader's judgment, both in terms of its organization according to strict criteria of classification and criticism, and in terms of the apparent instances of disregard for the interviewees' testimony". Some quotations in the thesis did not accord with interview recordings. The university suspended his degree and asked him to resubmit his thesis. The new thesis was rejected.