The concerts, parties, balls, and general pageantry continues to unfold, as everyone: from our grand new President and major entertainers, to the youngest citizens along the train-and-parade route, believe they are now part of “history.” Everyone has come to have their picture taken, to be part of it all, to be in the historical picture.
But what does this mean if the historical record is as “cooked” as Bernie Madoff’s books? What if our textbooks and our media lie outright? Or “lie” by omitting crucial information?
For example: Yesterday, I watched the History Channel’s documentary about the American 1960s. It featured wonderful footage of stirring, iconic moments but, as for accuracy? No way, Jose!
The program showed us Martin Luther King Jr. speaking (he was wonderful then and he still is now), and focused on his noble, non-violent marches and ugly assassination; and on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy as he ran for the Presidency.
Oddly enough, just like the movie “Bobby,” which I reviewed two years ago, the History channel ”disappeared” the fact that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by an angry Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, who was furious that America was helping to arm Israel.
Why? Why did both the History Channel and a major feature film about the second Kennedy assassination, both fail to explain who Kennedy’s assassin really was? For the historical record, let me tell you.
On June 5, 1968, Palestinian Arab Sirhan Sirhan fatally shot Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Pasadena, California. Sirhan initially pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, but while the jury was absent, he shouted in the courtroom, “I killed Robert Kennedy willfully…I’m willing to fight for [the Arab cause]… I’m willing to die for it.” He then requested to change his plea to guilty on all counts, announcing the intention to request execution, but the court denied this.
Defense witnesses testified that Sirhan had been psychologically scarred by his exposure to the Israeli war of Independence as a child in Jerusalem, where he was born in 1944. The defense also testified that Sirhan had become enraged when Senator Kennedy pledged military support for Israel (“fifty phantom jets”) if necessary.
Sirhan stated at trial that he “’read everything about the Arab-Israeli situation he could lay his hands on,’ including publications from the Arab information center in the United States and a book on Zionist influence on U.S. policy in the Middle East.” He also testified that, on seeing an advertisement for a march in support of Israel, he was “brought back to the six days in June of the previous year,” and that “a fire started burning inside of him as a result of the ad.”
Evidence produced at trial suggested that Sirhan was insane and inclined to outlandish mysticism, and that he had an intense loathing for the state of Israel and for Jews. He was sentenced to death, but this sentence was commuted to life in prison. All attempts at obtaining parole have been denied and he remains in a California State prison.
What’s really interesting is that Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian Christian, not a Muslim–but then, so was Edward Said, that arch fiend Propagandist whose seizing the mantle of sacred victimhood for the non-existent “Palestinian” people, especially their exterminationist-terrorist leaders, has become an idee fixee in both the West and in the “Orient,” to everyone’s great detriment.
Interestingly, both Said and Sirhan Sirhan were Palestinian Christians and were therefore considered “dhimmis,” inferior, subject to “protection.” (And taxation, torture, exile, and murder). Perhaps both Said and Sirhan wanted to please their superior race Masters–a variant on the court Jew phenomenon, or on the eunuch in the Islamic harem phenomenon.
My dear friend, Ibn Warraq, and others have challenged Edward Said on the grounds of truth. Ibn Warraq demonstrates that Said engaged in the art of the Big Lie. Said was a sexist who stole all thunder from a nascent feminist movement within the western academy and instead, insisted, right along with the Marxists, that brown-skinned men, Arab men, Muslim men, Palestinian men, were far more nobly oppressed than….mere women.
NEWSFLASH: A reader has pointed out that the very same lawyer who defended Saddam Hussein also defended Sirhan Sirhan: None other than America’s very own, left-leaning Ramsay Clark.
As I say: Follow the ideological alliances.
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