On May 15, 2002  Dr. Ilan Pappe, senior lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University was sent a letter notifying him that he faced trial and possible dismissal from his position.  The charge was that he had violated 'the duties of an academic member of staff', that he had  "slandered departments and members in the humanities faculty, damaged their professional reputation and endangered the possible promotion of some of them.".  All this was done in a series of letters he wrote and distributed via email.

The email posts all had to do with Pappe's efforts to assist a 55 year old graduate student whose Master's Thesis was under attack by an Israeli veteran's organization.   The graduate student, Teddy Katz wrote about an incident after a battle in five villages near Haifa, particularly a village called Tantura.  Using mainly oral testimony by Palestinians from the village and former soldiers of the Alexandroni Brigade of the Haganah (the pre-state army of Israel), Katz's thesis concluded that on 22-23 May 1948, some 200 unarmed Tantura villagers, mostly young men, were shot dead after the village had surrendered following an attack of Haganah troops.

Katz's thesis was accepted by his Haifa University department at the end of 1999 and was given the highest possible grade.

In January 2000 the Israeli paper Ma'ariv summarized the charges, and had scholars discuss the article and one of them Professor Asa Kasher used the term "massacre" to describe what went on at Tantura.  A few days after the article appeared veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade sued Katz for a million shekels. Even though it had accepted the Master's Thesis the university refused to offer Katz any legal, moral, or practical support in facing the suit.    Katz  was represented by a Palestinian legal NGO.

Katz tried to get the case dismissed by saying this was all a scholarly argument that should be settled within the university.  However, since his own university wouldn't come and argue this point his effort was gravely undermined.

Under pressure from family and neighbors at the kibbutz where he lived Katz caved in and in court made a sweeping and abject apology, "There is no basis whatsoever for the allegation that the Alexandroni Brigade, or any other fighting unit of the Jewish forces, committed killings of people in Tantura after the village surrendered…"  12 hours later, however, Katz went back to the judge and