This is where the PLO spends their money,
jpost.com
Israeli admits taking PLO aid in libel trial against massacre thesis
By ABIGAIL RADOSZKOWICZ
An Israeli sued for libel by Alexandroni Brigade veterans for writing in a masters thesis that their comrades massacred 150 to 200 men in the Arab village of Tantura during the 1948 War of Independence, has admitted receiving $10,000 from the PLO during the ensuing trial, a newspaper reports today.
Theodore Katz, 58, an activist with the leftist Meretz Party, claimed to have stumbled upon the previously unknown massacre story, in oral histories from refugees of that period. He received a grade of 97 for the thesis from the University of Haifa.
After a report about the thesis was published by the Ma'ariv daily in January 2000, about 10 brigade members sued him for libel, denying the story. During the trial, significant discrepancies were discovered between the oral history cassettes and Katz's text.
Katz, of Kibbutz Magal, initially agreed to a compromise in which the veterans would drop their charges in exchange for an apology. Just 12 hours later, however, Katz retracted, and changed lawyers.
Many suspected at the time that political interests had supplied Katz with funds. Katz now admits that he was given $10,000 by the late Faisal Husseini, then head of the PLO-supported Orient House, the Yediot Aharonot daily reported Sunday.
He is also quoted as saying he sees nothing wrong in receiving the funds from the PLO.
In the wake of the trial, the University of Haifa set up a committee, working together with Katz, to recheck the audio tapes of the interviews for the thesis. It, too, found numerous discrepancies. Last November the thesis was ordered off the shelves of the university's libraries for six months, until Katz submits a corrected version, which he is apparently still working on nine months later, Yediot says. |
