From Solomonia, The Forgotten Assassin

Blogging at Solomonia, Hillel Stavis recalls the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which occurred 40 years ago this coming Thursday, June 5. As were the rest of us, Stavis was reminded of this event by Hillary Clinton's most recent effort to appear relevant to the Democratic nomination--an act Daniel Henninger recently explained as part of the reason Hillary goes nuclear.

Below is just a bit of this thoughtful post. Stavis compares our memory of the assassins Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray with that of Sirhan Sirhan, who has never been the recipient of the degree of vitriol and loathing directed at the other two members of the repugnant trio of '60s killers:

"Palestinianism", in its privileged role as the embodiment and heir to Gramscian Marxism, Fanonism and all the accompanying romantic, fantasy-freighted clichés of the Left, has rendered the murderer of the progressive dream as a faceless, proletarian, third world cipher.

Of course, Sirhan Bashir Sirhan was not faceless or motive-less. He knew precisely why he pulled the trigger. RFK was his enemy and the enemy of his people. Sirhan’s father and presumptive teacher, Bishara, said after the assassination:

"I can say that I do not regret his death as Kennedy the American politician who attempted to gain the presidential election by his aggressive propaganda against the Arab people of Palestine...Kennedy was promising the Zionists to supply them with arms and aircraft…and thus provoked the sensitive feelings of Sirhan who had suffered so much from the Jews…It is not fair to accuse my son without a full examination of Zionist atrocities against the Arabs - those atrocities which received the support and blessings of Robert Kennedy."

Fully aware of the date -- one year to the day -- of the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli six day war, Sirhan Sirhan planned to kill RFK for his staunch support of Israel, evinced by many of his speeches during the Democratic primary race in California. At the Neveh Shalom Synagogue Kennedy said, "…in Israel -- unlike so many other places in the world -- our commitment is clear and compelling. We are committed to Israel's survival. We are committed to defying any attempt to destroy Israel, whatever the source. And we cannot and must not let that commitment waver."

Police later found news clippings in Sirhan’s pockets documenting Kennedy’s pro-Israel positions. Later, at Sirhan’s trial, a police investigator testified that,

"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."

Read the rest here.