MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2022, TODAY IN HISTORY

 MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2022,  TODAY IN HISTORY

This week I will be visiting my sister and brother-in-law.  I wanted to be a few days ahead, so I am opting for doing some “Today in History” blogs.

On April 23, 1969, Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted in the assassination of politician Robert F. Kennedy. In 1972, Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty.

In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York who had just won California’s Democratic presidential primary, gave a victory speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After the speech, Kennedy was making his way toward the hotel kitchen to greet supporters when he was shot three times at close range by Sirhan Sirhan with a .22 caliber revolver; a fourth bullet went through Kennedy’s jacket. Five other people were shot as well, none fatally. Several of the senator’s friends and aides subdued Sirhan on the scene.

Kennedy died at the hospital the next day, June 6, at age 42. The funeral for Kennedy, who served as U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and had been a senator since 1965, was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. His body was then taken to Washington, D.C., by train, with thousands of people lining the route to pay their respects. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963.

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant born in Jerusalem in 1944, moved to the United States with his family as a boy and attended high school in California. He later stated he killed Robert Kennedy because the senator had supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Following a three-month trial, during which Sirhan’s lawyers argued he was mentally unstable at the time of the murder, he was convicted on April 17, 1969. On April 23, he was given the death penalty. However, in 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. His requests for parole have been denied over a dozen times, and he continues to serve his time in a California prison.

*****

Okay, Karen.  What is your point?

In the past week, new violence has sprung up between Israel and Palestine.  It seems to rise and fall over the years - sometimes almost a war and sometimes just a “pot left simmering on a back burner”.  

Israel, as a modern state, was founded on May 14, 1948.  Mostly with backing from the allied countries from World War II (Great Britain, United States, France, Russia, and others), the nations were upset by Nazi Germany’s attempt to kill all the Jewish people.  What might be a fair way to work this out?  They settled on creating a Jewish state.

Of course, this was opposed by the people already living in the area (aka “Palestinians”).  

This situation has festered over and over. The Seven Days War (where Israel stood strong against enemies).  

The Middle East situation is a political hotbed.  American Presidents (and congress) have generally been pretty loyal supporters of Israel, but that can change.  

*****

The other factor from Sirhan Sirhan’s murder of Robert Kennedy can be hard to tell.  Kennedy had just won California’s primary which would mean a lot of delegates to the Democratic Convention.  He also would be considered one of the front-runners.  

The Democratic Convention in Chicago that summer was a very divided one.  There were great anti-war protests (for the Vietnam War), and the “Chicago Seven” (Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner) had thrown the city into chaos.  

It wasn’t certain that Kennedy would have gotten the nomination to run against Richard Nixon, but Hubert Humphrey did get the nomination and lost to Nixon.  (And, in Nixon’s re-election campaign four years later we have the infamous “Watergate” situation that caused Nixon to resign.  

An (at least to me) significant aspect of 1968, is that it was the first time I could vote in a Presidential Election (and vote in general).  I am a “Baby Boomer” - the huge group that was born right after World War II.  I can remember a lot of emphasis on having us vote.  I sense that the baby boomers would have voted for Robert Kennedy over Hubert Humphrey (on the Democratic side of the ledger), and then voted for Robert Kennedy over Richard Nixon (in the general education).  

To many of us baby boomers, and college students, we wanted radical change.  

Get out of Vietnam.  

Do something about the environment. 

Listen to us. 

Solve the social justice issues of blacks.

But radical change between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon?  Not much difference.  And, maybe George McGovern (who ran in 1972) was maybe too radical.  Robert Kennedy after the admiration of his older brother John F. Kennedy may have pulled the new voters his way. 

So, the assassination of Robert Kennedy may really have changed American politics. And, changed views of Jews and Arabs/Israel and Palestine.  

Just my view of history.!!!

BUT - remember - LOVE WINS!!!

Karen

April 25, 2022