Sirhan Sirhan

It is time to elevate Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Robert Kennedy, in 1968, to his rightful status: the founder and father of the Islamic Jihad War on the West.

Sirhan was a 24 year old Palestinian who moved to the U.S. with his parents when he was 12 years old.  He chose Robert Kennedy as his target because Kennedy promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel.  The murder occurred one year after the Israeli victory over the Arab world in the 1967 War.

Sirhan cased the hotel where he killed Kennedy two days earlier and went to practice at a pistol range the day before the murder. Sirhan said his reason for his deliberate murder of Robert Kennedy was very clear. ' I did it for Palestine'.  He hated Israel and Jews and except for the intervention of the judge he would have gotten one of his court appointed Jewish lawyers, Emile Berman, removed.

We are now in a time where a U.S. president and attorney general think that there is no Islamic Jihad against the West, just an inchoate series of criminal acts.

I think it is time to declare June 5th 1968 the day the real Islamic Jihad War against the West began.  Sirhan Sirhan was not a man ahead of his time, he was the first soldier to be captured on American soil in a war that began 41 years ago.

We should have a special day of remembrance on June 5th much like December 7th.