Monday marked the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles by an anti-Israel Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan, who murdered the candidate on the first anniversary of the Six-Day War.
Kennedy had just won the Democratic Party presidential primary in California, and was on a path to secure the party’s nomination for the presidency in 1968, which many historians believe he would likely have won.
The younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was also assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy had served as U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York. He ran on his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Along the way, Kennedy put together a seemingly unlikely coalition of urban black voters and conservative rural and working-class white voters — the elusive alignment later sought by Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Sirhan “may have been America’s first Middle Eastern lone-wolf terrorist,” the left-wing Israeli daily Ha’aretz wrote in 2018. Born in Jerusalem, Sirhan hated Kennedy for the latter’s vocal support for the State of Israel.
FILE – Sirhan Sirhan reacts during a parole hearing at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego on Feb. 10, 2016. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, rejected releasing Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan from prison more than a half-century after the 1968 slaying left a deep wound during one of America’s darkest times. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, Pool, File)
Denied parole over a dozen times, Sirhan remains in prison in California. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was 14 years old at the time of his father’s death, is running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2024.
Kennedy did not mark the anniversary of the assassination; he is running as his own man, though pundits on the left and the right have recalled his father’s legacy in reflecting on Kennedy’s prospects for the campaign.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – JUNE 05: Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks as Michael Smerconish hosts a SiriusXM Town Hall with Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at The Centre Theater on June 05, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for SiriusXM)
The Six-Day War was a defensive war in which Israel faced attack from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel launched a preemptive strike on Egypt but only took over eastern Jerusalem after being attacked by Jordan.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.