High Court Sets Aside Sentence of First Jew Ever to Be Condemned to Death in Palestine; Jews Rejoice

Joseph Mizrachi Urphali, the first Jew ever sentenced to death in Palestine, had his sentence set aside today by the Court of Appeals and the case is to be remitted for fresh evidence. The decision was rendered by the senior British judge A. O. C. K. Corries, acting as president of the Court of Appeals and Judges F. H. Baker and R. Copland of the Jerusalem District Court.

The rendering of the decision which took ten minutes pierced the uncanny stillness of the breathless court as Judge Corries delivered in measured tones his verdict which made a difference between life and death for Joseph Urphali, a prosperous Jaffa Jew.

Robed in the scarlet blouse and trousers and black cap reserved for a man condemned to the gallows and standing in a cage elongated to accommodate the twelve Arabs from Kolonia who were acquitted for the murder of the members of the Macleff family and their guests in Motza, Urphali instantaneously changed from a bent old man, weighted down by his manacles, to a free, upstanding middle-aged man, impervious to his handcuffs which slipped off as his aged mother embraced and kissed him before he was returned to prison.

In everybody’s opinion, the retrial means an acquittal. If Urphali’s counsel, Elish, hadn’t asked for a retrial as an alternative to a complete vindication, Urphali would have left the court today an entirely free man, instead of merely with hopes of being bailed Sunday.

Urphali’s young wife sharing in the deathly suspense shared the joy too as she stood up during the judges’ pronouncement.

The Court clearly discredited the four Arab witnesses, saying that it was impossible to reconcile their evidence with the medical evidence, and holding that the lower court had been unjustified in accepting the Arab’s story. At first the judgment ruled out Urphali’s counsel’s contention. Then it declared that the prosecution had not made out a satisfactory case in alleging that two Arabs had been killed on the day of the riots when the Arabs attempted to invade Tel Aviv from a point just outside Urphali’s house. At this point the hopes of Urphali’s relatives and friends rose and fell as they crammed the court room, until the concluding sentences made it clear that the verdict would be a retrial.

Two thousand people, mostly Jews, filled the former office of the Russian diplomatic representative in Palestine, where the law courts are maintained, and were loud in their anxious murmurs which interfered with the pronouncement of the judgment to such an extent that the police were ordered to disperse the crowd which later overflowed all the lanes and streets in the neighborhood.

Urphali’s retrial makes the second half of the Sabbath a joyous one for the entire Jewish community for whom a confirmation of the death sentence, following the acquittal of 12 Arabs in the Macleff case, rightly or wrongly, would have been interpreted as symbolic of the Palestine administration’s post-riot justice.