Runaway Teen Samuel Sheinbein

Amid the bizarre string of foreign-policy fiascos in which Israelfound itself mired as it greeted the new year, surely none was quite so bizarre as the case of runaway teenager Samuel Sheinbein of Maryland.

Sheinbein, 17, a high school senior from Montgomery County, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., is a suspect in one of the state’s most grisly murders in recent memory. He fled to Israel Sept.21, two days after a charred, dismembered corpse was found near hishome. Israel detained him a week later, but announced it could not extradite him. He claims Israeli citizenship, and Israeli law bars extradition of its citizens.

Maryland authorities called the Israeli stance “absurd.” A team of state and federal lawyers flew to Tel Aviv on the eve of the new yea rto press for extradition. Israel was scrambling for a way to get around its own law and comply. While the lawyers argued, Sheinbein spent Rosh Hashanah under suicide watch in an Israeli jail.

The case might have drawn little notice beyond the local news, but for the fact that the local newspaper in Montgomery County happens to be the Washington Post, the daily paper of America’s policy elite.The lurid tale has stirred anger from one end of Pennsylvania Avenueto the other, say numerous sources. One key lawmaker, Rep. BobLivingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,threatened to cut $50 million from Israel’s U.S. aid unless the youth were sent home. “My sensibilities as a citizen of the United States have been violated,” Livingston said.

The timing could not have been worse for Israel. Congress was due this week to wrap up next year’s foreign aid appropriation. The bill includes not only Israel’s usual $3 billion, but $100 million for the Palestinians. Pro-Israel lobbyists had sought to link that aid to Palestinian compliance with various obligations — including,administration sources tartly noted, extradition to Israel of accused Palestinian murderers.

In public, there were few signs that the case would be used for diplomatic leverage. Congress and the administration alike appeared eager to isolate it from other U.S.-Israeli sore points. There were signs, however, that the affair might yet damage Israel in ways other crises have not, by undercutting Israel’s last line of support,heartland conservatives.

The story began Sept. 19, when a real estate agent found an unidentified corpse in an empty house in Wheaton, limbless and burned almost beyond recognition. Following a trail of blood to the Sheinbein garage, police found damning evidence including an electric saw. On Sept. 22, a warrant was issued for Sheinbein’s arrest. By then he had fled to his grandmother’s home in Israel.

Two days later, police arrested a second suspect, Aaron Needle,17, a friend of Sheinbein’s since their primary school days at a local Jewish community day school. The victim was now identified as Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr., 19, a friend of Needle’s. Witnesses reported seeing the three together shortly before Tello disappeared.On Sept. 27, Sheinbein was picked up in Tel Aviv, after being hospitalized for a drug overdose.

The crime story became a diplomatic incident on Sept. 29, when Israel announced it could not send Sheinbein home because of a 1977 law, inspired by French swindler-turned-Knesset member Samuel Flatto-Sharon, barring extradition of Israeli citizens. Sheinbein is U.S.-born, but claims Israeli citizenship through his father Sol, who was born in British-ruled Palestine in 1944 and brought to America in1950.

In the manicured suburbs of Montgomery County, diplomacy took a back seat to speculation over the possible motives of the two Jewish day school graduates accused of the gruesome slaying. Both had histories of disciplinary problems, and Needle had dropped out ofhigh school. Still, friends and neighbors were hard put to connect the teens with the crime.

Sheinbein’s parents hired an investigator, who claimed to findevidence implicating Tello in drug dealing. The Sheinbeins reportedly told a judge their son will plead self-defense, arguing Tello died trying to rob the other two. Tello’s family angrily disputes both allegations. Needle’s attorney says his client killed no one.

Whether the two friends will stand trial together remains unclear.Israel offered to try Sheinbein in Tel Aviv, but Maryland officialssaid it would be nearly impossible. Facing intense U.S. pressure,Israel reportedly was seeking ways to expel Sheinbein on atechnicality — perhaps by annulling the father’s citizenship Vatican-style, through a loophole in Israel’s citizenship law, thusinvalidating the son’s claim.

As international crises go, the Sheinbein affair struck mostobservers as tepid stuff. It evokes no anti-Israel rhetoric orZionist chest-thumping, unlike such flareups as the Ras Al-Amoudsettlement dispute or the botched Sept. 25 assassination attempt on aHamas leader in Amman. Both sides would like the whole thing to goaway.

In a way, the case actually highlights the underlying solidity ofU.S.-Israel ties, which periodically weather such jolts withoutpermanent damage. The Sheinbein case might even offer a lesson aboutother U.S.-Israel disputes: The relationship is stronger thanindividual leaders or their policies.

At the same time, Israel’s inability to resolve the case wasthreatening to accomplish something that no other recent dispute hasdone: alienate Israel’s conservative supporters, in Congress andelsewhere, who are unmoved by Palestinian rights but outraged bycrime.

One sign: reaction to Livingston’s aid threat. “We’ve gottentremendous support from members of Congress and from all across thecountry,” says Livingston aide Mark Corallo. “We’ve gotten hundredsof phone calls, one hundred percent supporting us.”

“It’s not an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic thing,” Corallo said, but”a matter of American justice.” He wasn’t sharing the contents of themessages, though.

J.J. Goldberg is the author of “Jewish Power: Inside theAmerican Jewish Establishment.” He writes from New York.

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