protested, and Gilat wrote a follow-up piece including their denial that a massacre had occurred. Katz originally received a grade of 97%, but the veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade sued Katz for libel, and the legal case drew into question the accuracy of the oral testimony upon which Katz's claims were based. After two days' cross-examination in court, Katz signed a statement saying: "After checking and re-checking the evidence, it is clear to me now, beyond any doubt, that there is no basis whatsoever for the allegation that the Alexandroni Brigade, or any other fighting unit of the Jewish forces, committed killing of people in Tantura after the village surrendered." Katz retracted his statement 12 hours later, asserting that he had agreed to sign the retraction "in a moment of weakness" under pressure of family members, because he had suffered a stroke a year earlier and his family were afraid the strain of the court hearings will cause a relapse. However, the court already registered his stated retraction, ruled against him and refused to re-open the deliberations. Katz appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, but it declined to intervene. He also tried to place paid ads in the Haaretz and Yediot Aharonot papers, declaring that he was taking back his retraction and reaffirming the conclusions of his paper - but the papers' lawyers advised that publishing such ads might make the papers themselves liable to a libel suit. In the wake of this case, the University of Haifa suspended Katz's degree, inviting him to revise his thesis. The paper was sent out to five external examiners, a majority (3:2) of whom failed it. Katz was subsequently awarded a "non-research" MA. Subsequent related developments The historian Ilan Pappé supported Katz and his thesis, and has challenged the Israeli veterans to take him to court, claiming he has evidence that the massacre occurred. In a 2001 article in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Pappé defended the use of oral history with reference to the USA. He pointed out that that history was obtained by Katz, not only from Palestinian villagers, but also from Israeli soldiers. Pappé provided new evidence that had come to light after Katz had presented his thesis, in one case quoting (with reference to the IDF source file) "from a document from the Alexandroni Brigade to IDF headquarters in June notes: 'We have tended to the mass grave, and