Understanding RFK's assassination as Palestinian terror

[shira]

Forty-five years ago, on June 6, 1968, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds. His assassination, coming five years after his brother Jack’s and two months after Martin Luther King’s, traumatized America. Amid the tumultuous 1960s, with youth rioting, crime soaring, blacks protesting, the Vietnam War souring, and these young, visionary leaders dying, Americans wondered: “is ours a sick society.” While America then needed reforming, the soul-searching around Robert Kennedy’s assassination was unmerited. The truth -- which most overlooked then – was that this Kennedy assassination was the first major act of Palestinian terrorism targeting the United States.

No new evidence has emerged, we just understand the world better. At the time, Sirhan Sirhan, Kennedy’s murderer, was usually called a “Jordanian” – there was minimal international awareness of the “Palestinians” as a factor in “the Arab-Israeli conflict." Reporters mentioned that he was motivated by Kennedy’s support for Israel. And the assassination occurred on the Six Day War’s first anniversary. Nevertheless, the post-mortems emphasized the plague of violence in general, the availability of guns in particular, and the chaos that seemed to be threatening America. When Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Kennedy in 1963, many people said “he” killed Kennedy, believing Oswald was a lone gunman; five years later, when a lone gunman shot Bobby, many said “they” killed Kennedy, reflecting growing fears of broad amorphous, social forces many people now distrusted.

Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Christian Arab born in Jerusalem, who had immigrated with his family to the US when he was 12, said, when arrested, "I can explain it. I did it for my country." In his notebooks, he had scribbled: "Kennedy must die by June 5th,” the Six-Day War anniversary.

Further proof of Sirhan Sirhan’s identity as a Palestinian terrorist came in March, 1973, when Black September terrorists took diplomats hostage at the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan. The terrorists demanded a prisoner exchange, which included Sirhan. Eventually, Yasir Arafat ordered his henchmen to murder the three Western diplomats, a Belgian and two Americans – a brutal crime that also was frequently overlooked.

more...
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/understanding-rfks-assassination-palestinian-terror

[aquart]

1. Uh huh.

I noticed at the time that anti-Semitism killed a Catholic.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. How convenient, when people ask " why have we had so many

Republican president since WWII ? . Killing the head wasn't enough to rid the fear of the tail, maybe , it was the beginning of the stronghold MIC and Corporations started running rampant with Misanthropy .

[orpupilofnature57]

3. What we knew and what we know, scribblings and association isn't proof of anything .

the CIA was running unopposed after JFK was assassinated, and the middle east was a prime example of how the " Intelligence Community " has manipulated the world, since WWII, the ' Great Business Plot ' just took a little longer than planned .

[Mosby]

7. His hatred of Israel is part of the court record

Last edited Tue Jun 11, 2013, 05:27 PM - Edit history (1)

He made his motivation clear to the police and also during the trial and subsequent interviews.

Sirhan is an Arab Christian who was born in Jerusalem and who strongly opposed Israel. In 1989, he told David Frost, "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians." Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Arab–Israeli conflict in the Middle East.

A motive cited for his actions is the Middle East conflict.[17] After his arrest, Sirhan said, "I can explain it. I did it for my country."[17] Sirhan believed he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War,[26] which had begun exactly one year to the day before the assassination. During a search of Sirhan's apartment after his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing a diary entry which demonstrated that his anger had gradually fixated on Robert Kennedy, who had promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel if he were elected president. Sirhan's journal entry of May 18, 1968, read: "My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more of an unshakable obsession...Kennedy must die before June 5th


During Sirhan's testimony, Cooper asked him to explain his reasons for the attack on Kennedy. Sirhan launched into "a vicious diatribe about the Middle East conflict between Arab and Jew".[13][17] Defense counsel Emile Zola Berman, who was Jewish, was upset by Sirhan's statements and expressed his intentions to resign from the defense team. Berman was eventually talked out of resigning by Cooper and stayed until the end of the trial.


Later in prison, Sirhan stated that his motivation was anger fueled by liquor. An interview with Sirhan in 1980 revealed new claims that a combination of liquor and anger over the anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war triggered his actions the night he assassinated RFK. "You must remember the circumstances of that night, June 5. That was when I was provoked," Sirhan says, recorded in a transcript of one of his interviews with Mehdi, later president of the New York-based American-Arab Relations Committee. "That is when I initially went to observe the Jewish Zionist parade in celebration of the June 5, 1967, victory over the Arabs. That was the catalyst that triggered me on that night." Then Sirhan said, "In addition, there was the consumption of the liquor, and I want the public to understand that..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan

[orpupilofnature57]

12. Thank You, very informative .

[Ken Burch]

15. point of information:

Does anybody know if there was really GOING to be a parade in Los Angeles on June 5th to celebrate the Israeli victory in the Six Day War?

[oberliner]

16. Yes

From the transcript of his trial:

MR. COOPER: Now, I show you Page 18 of Part 1 of
that June 4th edition, and ask you if you see on that page the
ad that you had seen?

A. Yes, sir, I do.

Q. Now, will you read that for us, please, that ad?

A. "Join in the" and then in smaller letters, "Miracle March,
for Israel" — in very bold type, "On Miracle Mile tomorrow"
in the same size type, "Wednesday, June 5, 6:30 p.m., Wilshire
Boulevard and Detroit Street. Parade moves west to" and this
is in bold type "on the steps of the L.A. County Art Museum,
Sheldon L. Pollack, Chairman."

[Ken Burch]

19. OK. Thanks for that. I was never sure if there really was such a parade

or if Sirhan just thought there was going to be one.

In any case, he wouldn't have had to shoot Bobby to stop it, if that was his intention...he could just as easily have gone over to the Hilton and shot Eugene McCarthy.

My conclusion has always been that Sirhan was a patsy, and that many others were involved in RFK's killing. Until we know for absolutely sure, columns like the one at the JPost link should not be used for threads here...because injecting demagogy about this particular event serves no good purpose, or indeed no recognizable purpose at all, other than to help push a "It's ALL the Palestinians' fault because they are all soulless, irrational, bigotry-based killing machines who are utterly devoid of even a sliver of normal humanity" narrative. I know that isn't YOUR intention, O, but am just pointing this out as a general observation.

[GeorgeGist]

4. Terror doesn't work ...

If its kept a secret ... For 45 years

[shaayecanaan]

5. I guess that makes Jack Ruby a Jewish terrorist...

oh, sorry, I forgot. Silly me. Terrorism is what Arabs do.

[azurnoir]

6. Be sure to remember that too

however I remember when RFK was assassinated and I do not seem to remember that Sirhan Sirhan was ever called Jordanian it was always Palestinian

[oberliner]

9. See my advice to the other poster

It could work wonders for you as well.

[azurnoir]

10. could it.? why? spell it out ecactly for us please

and the entire point of this OP seems to be to rev anti-Palestinian sentiments via a 45 year old case perhaps some 'reflection' on that is in order or is it mission accomplished -sort of?

eta my comment referred to the only Arabs do terrorism part but hey do not let that stop you promise?

[oberliner]

8. This post says a lot about where you are coming from

Sirhan is identified as a Palestinian who claimed he was acting for nationalistic reasons.

Jack Ruby was not an Israeli and did not make any claim to be acting for nationalistic reasons.

That you would try to equate the two (and put "Jew" as the counter to "Palestinian&quot should be instructive for you.

I hope that you do some quiet self-reflection and share whatever insights emerge from doing so.

Perhaps this will lead to a breakthrough of self-understanding.

[azurnoir]

11. The articles tells us he was identified as Jordanian at the time

but the last time I saw stuff like this being bandied about was years ago on Jihad Watch, odd the company that some here keep

[shaayecanaan]

13. As does yours...

That you would try to equate the two (and put "Jew" as the counter to "Palestinian&quot should be instructive for you.

I merely noted that he was Jewish, something which always seems to induce apoplexy in you. You don't like Jewish settlers being called Jewish settlers, although the fact is that they are specifically Jewish. There are, after all, virtually no Arab Israeli settlers.

[Ken Burch]

14. Problem is, Sirhan didn't actually KILL Bobby.

When the shots were fired, Sirhan was in front of Bobby and jumped off of a steam table, an act which would naturally have forced the barrel of his gun down as he tried to keep it straight to fire.

Also, according to virtually all witnesses, Sirhan's gun was at least three feet away from Bobby when the shot that killed him was fired. Bobby was killed(according to Thomas Noguchi, the LA county coroner who performed the autopsy)by a shot fired within three inches of Bobby's head, traveling in an upward and nearly vertical direction, and fired FROM BEHIND the senator.

Sirhan could not have killed Bobby Kennedy. And the notes in his diaries about killing Bobby were written in a totally different handwriting than any other entries.

Finally, if the issue was Israel/Palestine, Sirhan should have been trying to kill EVERY Democratic and Republican presidential candidate in 1968, since all of them had the exact same position on the issue that Bobby held.

And this article is demagogic bullshit.

And it's still a despicable lie to reduce the causes of this conflict to "Palestinian terrorism". There is at least as much blame on the Israeli side for the conflict as there is blame on the Palestinian side. The occupation would have been put in place and kept in place no matter what tactics the Palestinians used, because it was driven by ideology about "redeeming&quot i.e., taking) the land, not "security".

[oberliner]

17. You should read the transcipt of the trial

The issue definitely was Israel/Palestine. He makes it very clear in his statements.

[Ken Burch]

20. That was the thing Sirhan was supposedly concerned about.

But, as I just pointed out above, he himself couldn't have fired the shot that killed Bobby...which means there were others involved...others who, most likely, had more familiarly American motivations(such as, probably, ending the anti-poverty efforts of the 1960's, preventing blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and poor whites from forming a common political alliance for social change, and most importantly, making sure the Vietnam war kept going).

It's just way to simple to reduce this whole thing to "Bobby's dead because Sirhan hated Israel".

[azurnoir]

18. No the OP is a blatant attempt to rev up antiPalestinian sentiments

especially among Democrats and progressives at a time when the issue of a solution is once again coming to the to table

[shira]

21. LOL.....it's also exactly 45 years since the assassination. n/t

[azurnoir]

22. well actually it's not exactly so why then did you post this now?

if it is just an 'anniversary reminder' of what are we being reminded exactly? Because RFK's death only seems to be a vehicle of sorts for the author

[Ken Burch]

23. shira, it's now pretty clear that Sirhan didn't act alone

(it's also impossible for Sirhan to have fired the shot that killed RFK, as I mentioned in a post above).

What he most likely was was a patsy for domestic right-wing enemies of Bobby.

Yes, this was the anniversary of the assassination, but no, Palestinians do not bear collective responsibility for Robert Kennedy's death and Sirhan's involvement(he was there with a gun and he did almost certainly inflict the non-lethal wounds suffered by the other four shooting victims, all of whom were shot from the front, rather than being hit from the back as Bobby was)clearly doesn't make him a completely innocent victim.

But Robert Kennedy was NOT killed because of the I/P issue. And, if he were alive today, I strongly suspect that Bobby would have a lot of compassion for Palestinians and what they've been put through.

You're using a national tragedy for cynical political ends here, shira, and frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself.

[shira]

24. try to live in reality, ken...

During a re-examination of the case in 1975, the Los Angeles Superior Court ordered expert examination of the possibility of a second gun having been used, and the conclusion of the experts was that there was little or no evidence to support this theory.4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories#Second_gunman



And Sirhan did kill Kennedy due to his support of Israel...
http://articles.philly.com/1989-02-21/news/26151029_1_sirhan-b-sirhan-arab-robert-kennedy

[azurnoir]

25. so shira what is this really? IMO the title alone gives away intent and I stated quite correctly up

thread, you seem to want to deny this, why play games if you believe in this yourself?

[dflprincess]

27. Thomas Noguchi, the ME who did the autopsy

said (in the official report) that the fatal shot was fired at a distance of no more that 1-1/2 to 3 inches judging from the powder burns on RFK's skin.

In his memoir Noguchi did mention that he never said Sirhan did it. In recent years, he has also said that they were not able to prove the bullet came from Sirhan's gun and has hinted that he thinks there had to be a 2nd gunman.

[riverwalker]

26. article is disgusting

and author "Gil Troy" is as transparent as Saran wrap on a moldy cheese. Maybe his racist dog whistles fly in the JP, but it pains me to see this crap on DU.

[madrchsod]

28. i thought i was the only one who noticed...

yup,it`s pretty bad .

[shaayecanaan]

29. You expressed it a lot better than I did...

I am very sceptical of news articles which attempt to weave events occurring over forty-five years apart into some kind of common narrative.

For example, imagine an article headline along the lines of the following:-

"The history of goy-murdering Jewish Serial killers began in 1977 during the Summer of Sam in New York..."

Obviously, this sort of false historiography is the stuff of dog whistlers and racists.