Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian

Reflections on what the putative assassin of Robert F. Kennedy has meant to my generation of Arab Americans.

Convicted of murdering Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Sirhan Sirhan is one of those rare figures whose name everyone knows, but whom nobody much discusses.  Recently, however, he has been in the news again. 

I remember being a kid, maybe an early teenager, sitting at the table with my father.  He was cheerful that afternoon, a rare occasion in those days.  He was my hero, but my insistence on doing poorly in school had caused lots of strain and we spent much of our time at loggerheads.  He greeted rebellion with even more severe punishment.  My father was kind and decent, but relentlessly confident in his idea of discipline. 

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Architectures of Delusion

A legendary prison break confounds and infuriates Zionist authorities

The symbolism is irresistible:  six men—political prisoners according to world opinion, terrorists according to their captors—tunneled out of Israel’s Gilboa, a heavily guarded colonial stockade, and then disappeared into the early morning darkness in an escape so daring and unlikely that it surely would become a big-budget production if Hollywood didn’t hate Palestinians. 

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