The Boston Globe's Sasha Issenberg has done a pretty-darn-good piece of reporting broaching the idea that RFK's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan in '68 was the U.S.'s first taste of Middle East terror, as Sirhan was motivated, he has said, by RFK's vigorous support for Israel. Alan Dershowitz makes the excellent point that Jews did not promote this idea back when because they felt they might be blamed for the assassination. He and Michael Oren do so now because they wish to argue that Palestinians have been crazy all these years. Peter Edelman formerly of the RFK campaign takes the unreconstructed position that Sirhan had a lot of screwy motivations, why should we credit this one?
I say pretty-darn-good because Issenberg has been captured by propagandists inasmuch as the piece fails to ask Palestinians about this, or get the bigger picture. Yes, I accept, this was Palestinian terror; but to suggest that it was somehow the first evidence of such fervor is a great disservice to readers. Both sides have practiced terror. In fact, crazy Zionists had in 1948 assassinated a figure of Kennedy's importance, Scandinavian Folke Bernadotte, the U.N. negotiator who wanted to divide Jerusalem and Mandate Palestine in an equitable manner. And in 1933 crazy Zionists killed the great Chaim Arlosoroff, who talked about Arab rights. And in 1924 had assassinated Jacob de Haan, a Dutch Jewish journalist who was an anti-Zionist. De Haan's murder is mentioned in this brilliant speech, outside AIPAC the other day, by Rabbi Weiss of Neturei Karta, in describing the costs of Zionism to Jews. I have not mentioned Rabin's murder in '95, by another crazy Zionist. A lot of Zionist assassinations, not to mention "targeted assassinations" that of course kill Palestinian civilians.
The bottom line? There has been a terrible cycle of violence in the Middle East that has claimed many prominent international figures, including RFK. Americans must consider what our role should be in mediating this cycle of violence. Should we continue to take one side in an ethnic/territorial struggle in which one side has been continually pushed back and denied statehood? And how long before Dershowitz and Oren, propagandists, say what is obvious, that Palestinian issues were an important motivator of the 9/11 crazies.
(Thanks to John O'Keeffe for the tip)
