With all the current tragic news from Israel, and fears of more to come in Israel, the United States and elsewhere in the world, it is easy to forget that the first major terrorist violence by a Palestinian Arab in the United States was in 1968.
I am referring to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 4, 1968 in Los Angeles. It has been largely forgotten that his assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was a Palestinian Arab, motivated by Kennedy's pro-Israel position in the US Presidential primary elections.
When Sirhan was in police custody they found him to be curiously composed, convinced he had done a great and marvelous thing and not at all troubled or remorseful. Sound familiar? If he was in the Middle East today, Sirhan would probably be a homicide bomber ready to give his life by killing Israeli or American civilians. Instead, he changed American history by killing Bobby Kennedy and injuring five others with eight shots from a .22 pistol.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born March 19, 1944, in Jerusalem, Palestine, the fifth son of Bishara and Mary (Muzher). The family practiced Jordanian Christianity. The Sirhan family came to the United States from Jerusalem in the mid-1950s. The family was not implicated; only Sirhan Sirhan seems to have become radicalized.
In his notebooks, police found writings such as: "RFK must die," "Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before June 5, 1968," and "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more (and) more of an unshakable obsession…(He) must be sacrificed for the cause of the poor exploited people."
You will note that June 5, 1968 is the first anniversary of the Six Day War. Lieutenant Manny Pena, the key investigator for the LAPD, summarized: "Sirhan was a self-appointed assassin. He decided that Bobby Kennedy was no good because he was helping the Jews. And he was going to kill him."
The connection between Sirhan and the Middle East went beyond his own fanaticism. In February 1973 gunmen burst into the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan and seized American Ambassador Cleo Noel and his charge d'affaires, George Curtis Moore. The Black September terrorist organization, associates of Yassir Arafat, took responsibility for the assault and demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan and other jailed Palestinian Arabs. The demands were not met and the Americans were executed, possibly on direct orders from Arafat.
For more on these events see "Robert Kennedy Assassination: Revisions and Rewrites" and "The Black September slaying of the Americans."
UPDATE: Got this letter from a Kesher Talk reader June 22:
Very interesting article about Sirhan Sirhan. Nonetheless, I was struck by the article's citation of how his family practiced Jordanian Christanity. That's incorrect as there's no such thing as to 'practice' Jordanian Christanity The family is Jordanian Christian and would either practice as Melkites, one of the Eastern rite churches of the Catholic church dominant in Jordan or as members of one of the various branches of Eastern Orthodox churches.
Great blog. I read it often.
Best regards,
Xavir Basora
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