Sami Esmail trial

In 1978 Sami Esmail, a 24-year-old American citizen of Palestinian descent, was prosecuted in Israel for membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The case generated a great deal of interest in the US, especially in the Arab American community and at Michigan State University, where Esmail was an Electrical Engineering graduate student.[1][2][3][4]

Esmail flew to Israel in December 1977 to visit his dying father, who lived in Ramallah.[4] He was arrested on his arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport on December 21 and signed a confession after being imprisoned for six days.[3] Esmail and his supporters in the United States claimed that he had been tortured or mistreated, held without access to a lawyer, and coerced into signing a false confession, among other arguments.[1][3][5][6] Monroe Freedman and Alan Dershowitz visited Israel to observe the trial and wrote a long editorial in The New York Times defending the Israeli government's conduct in the case and Israel's human rights record in general.[7]

Esmail was represented at his trial by the well-known Israeli lawyer Felicia Langer. In June 1978 he was convicted of membership in a hostile organization and sentenced to 15 months in prison, recorded from the date of his arrest.[8] He was released and deported in October 1978, having served 10 months of his sentence.[4] The case later resurfaced at a 1989 American extradition hearing, at which Esmail, Dershowitz, and Freedman all testified, and was mentioned in books by Dershowitz and his critic Norman Finkelstein.[9][10][11]

The trial

Esmail was tried before a three-judge panel headed by Dov Levin.[8] His conviction was based on his statements in the disputed confession and in court.[8] Esmail had stated that he had been recruited at MSU, had donated money to the PFLP and assisted in distributing its literature, and had traveled to Libya in 1976 for ideological instruction and military training.[8][12] Langer had challenged Esmail's confession in court, alleging that he had been kicked, beaten, and deprived of sleep until he had agreed to sign it.[12][13] However, the court accepted the confession as valid.[12] The court acknowledged that Esmail had come to Israel to visit his father, not on behalf of the PFLP.[8] Esmail was acquitted on the more serious charge of "contact with a foreign agent" on the grounds that the PFLP did not represent a foreign government.[12]

American reaction

American supporters charged that Esmail had been held without access to a lawyer, interrogated harshly, and threatened with being prevented from seeing his dying father unless he signed a confession, rendering his confession invalid.[3] They also argued that Israel was overstepping its authority by trying an American citizen over actions that were legal in the places where they allegedly occurred; the New York Times described this as "the issue of overriding interest" in the case.[14][15]

In March 1978 pro-Esmail protests were held in New York, Boston, Washington, Detroit, East Lansing, and San Francisco.[14] The city council of Detroit (which had a large Arab-American population) passed a resolution in support of Esmail.[2]

Notes
  1. "U.S. Acts on Charge Israel Tortured Arab-American." The New York Times. 1978-1-28. p. 5.
  2. Claiborne, William. "U.S. Citizen of Palestinian Descent Convicted in Israel; Palestinian-American Convicted in Israel." The Washington Post. 1978-6-8. A25
  3. Auerbach, Stuart. "Support Enlisted to Free U.S. Citizen Held in Israeli Jail Since December." The Washington Post. 1978-5-29. A18.
  4. "Israelis Expel Arab-American." The Washington Post. 1978-10-28. A12.
  5. Deming, Angus, with Milan J. Kubic. "Human Rights in Israel." Newsweek. 1978-2-20. p. 37.
  6. "Confession of U.S.-Born Arab is Challenged at Trial in Israel." The New York Times. 1978-3-16. p. A4.
  7. Freedman, Monroe H. and Alan M. Dershowitz. "Israeli Torture, They Said." The New York Times. 1978-6-2. p. A23.
  8. "Israel Sentences Arab American to 15 Months for Guerrilla Links." The New York Times. 1978-6-13. p. A4.
  9. Dershowitz, Alan. Chutzpah. Simon & Schuster, 1992. p. 237.
  10. Ahmad v. Wigen
  11. Finkelstein, Norman G. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. University of California Press, 2008 (2nd ed.). p. 149.
  12. Associated Press (1978-06-08). "Israelis Convict an American Arab". The New York Times.
  13. Associated Press (1978-03-16). "Confession of U.S.-Born Arab is Challenged at Trial in Israel". The New York Times. pp. A4.
  14. "Arabs and Other Students Plan Protest Over Trial By Israel of a U.S. Citizen". New York Times. 12 March 1978.
  15. Masterson, John; Barbara Thibeault (15 June 1978). "Letter to the Editor: On the Trial of Sami Esmail". New York Times.. The authors were the co-chairs of the National Committee to Defend the Human Rights of Sami Esmail.
  • Interview with Sami Esmail from the November-December 1978 issue of The Link, published by Americans for Middle East Understanding
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