The 'Unnaffiliated' Terrorist. Are America's New Immigrants Refusing to Become Americans?

On his way to a press conference June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a service corridor of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel. The criminal, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, was immediately apprehended. Throughout his trial and incarceration, Sirhan has asserted his innocence based on the perception that American foreign policy favored the Israelis over the Palestinians. For his role in this policy, Robert Kennedy was seen as an enemy of the Palestinian people.

The controversy surrounding the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy has once again been resurrected with the publication of Peter Evans’s book ‘Nemesis’ in which the author accuses Aristotle Onassis of having ‘funded’ the assassination through an official of the PLO. The controversy has also provoked a number of  Hollywood celebrities, including actor Robert Vaughn, to re-open the case.

For nearly 40 years conspiracy advocates have built their arguments not only around the controversies surrounding the ballistics evidence and the scene of the crime but the oft-repeated cry that the assassin had no real motive for his act. Yet there is a mountain of evidence to prove the contrary.

In 1968 the concept of Jihad was little known and continues to be poorly understood by the West. Jihad is a struggle. The struggle by Mohammed to create and propagate his concept of monotheism is the prototype of today's Jihad that is being waged against the West through any means possible. In the case of Sirhan Sirhan and Robert Kennedy, the means used was assassination.

A Christian Palestinian Arab, Sirhan was an unlikely candidate to wage Jihad against the West. Palestinian identity was thoroughly inculcated into Sirhan by his parents. Resentment against Israel and the United States for supporting what were perceived to be 'anti-Palestinian' policies seethed within them an many Arabs of all religious stripes.
"Palestinians" as we know them today are an invention of the second half of the 20th century. The British were in control at that time. The area known as Palestine was divided: part was "assigned" to Jordan and the rest was earmarked as a home for Jews. The explosive decision has rocked the world every since.

From the time he was a child Sirhan had been indoctrinated in ideologies that are at the center of his murderous act. Sirhan’s hatred had its roots in the milieu in which he was raised and the education he received. Later, as a young adult, Sirhan sought meaning to his increasingly hopeless life by embracing anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism  and Palestinian nationalism.

 As a child Sirhan  had been taught by Arab teachers who instilled in him the principles of the Palestinian cause. They promoted the cause of Palestinian nationalism and made constant references to the great Arab warrior, Saladin, who had expelled the foreign crusaders from Jerusalem. Teachers would attempt to inspire the children in their care to fight for Palestinian rights.

During Sirhan’s  trial his mother related  how the intense feelings of the Palestinians remained with the family even though they had been far removed from the conflict when they emigrated to America. She  told of how her family had lived in Jerusalem for “thousands of years” and she spoke of  the bitterness and hatred of the Israelis who had ‘taken their land’. Mary Sirhan believed her son had killed Robert Kennedy because of his Arab nationalism. She said, “What he did, he did for his country.” A friend of Sirhan’s, John Strathman, believed the young Arab was heavily influenced by his mother’s views.

The hatred and reviling of Jews and the disdain for America that is "under the control of Jews" was theme driven into him by his parents and others in his community.

Part of the reason for Sirhan Sirhan's act of violence is that he, a Palestinian Christian Arab, refused to assimilate into American culture. He is not alone. Today's America has immigrants from many groups that refuse to assimilate. The movements for making languages other English an "official language," the Sanctuary Movement for protection of illegal "entrants" into the United States, the call for multicultural-inclusion and wide-spread accommodation of religious and cultural difference rather than a repeat of past successful efforts to mold new citizens into Americans shows that there are deep divisions in America and "entrants," as immigrants now wish to be called, are not interested in becoming Americans as we know them, but are involved in a power struggle to remake America in the image of their home cultures.

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