Teddy Katz, a Haifa University graduate student, interviewed over 100 people – Arabs and Jews – for his masters thesis about what happened at Tantura, one of the 553 coastal Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 by the new Israeli state. According to the eyewitnesses and participants Katz interviewed, some 270-280 villagers were slaughtered in a massacre orchestrated by the Alexandroni Brigade.

Once Katz story prematurely went public, to the chagrin of Katz, Haifa University tried to disassociate itself from their graduate student and his thesis, although it had previously approved it and recommended for honors. Subsequently, Haifa University turned on tenured professor Ilan Pappe for defending Katz’ thesis.

On April 22, 2005, a week after Katz’s Olean talk in western New York, Britain’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted for an academic boycott of Israel, specifically citing the case of Teddy Katz and two universities, Bar Ilan and Haifa.

A member of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, Katz toured the U.S. in a series of speaking engagements in April, 2005. Part 3. Lecture April 14, 2005, Olean, New York snowshoefilms