RFK

I just heard an RFK remembrance on the news-radio. As Hillary noted, it was 40 years ago today that Sirhan Sirhan gunned down Robert Kennedy. They mentioned Sirhan, but made no attempt to describe him or his motivations. It's probably just as well, if they had spoken of motivation, they would have chalked it up to a mental illness. Which in a way it is; call it angry Arab syndrome:

What was never considered by writers and journalists, in their quest to find a motive for Sirhan's act of murder, was the effect that teachers and influential adults in Jerusalem's Arab community had on the young Palestinian. The way a nation educates its children on the characterization of other races and religions will often determine the relations between them. Populations are not culturally prone to hatred – they are educated toward it as studies of Nazi Germany show. The anti-Semitism inculcated in German children in the 1930s and 1940s remained with them into their old age and the West German government's post-war attempts to promote anti-fascism had no effect on those who grew up during the Third Reich.

The propaganda used by Palestinians had no less an effect on the younger generations of children from the 1940s to the present day. From an early age Sirhan had been taught by educators, family members, and friends that the Jews were "treacherous," "an evil enemy" and it was his "duty" to rid Jews from Palestine. Sirhan's generation was taught to hate, despise, and fear Jews, to believe that it was not only right for every self-respecting Arab to fight the Jewish state and that it was just and desirable to destroy it. Undoubtedly, this milieu of hatred had an intense effect on Sirhan as he grew up.

Sirhan's irrational hatred and anger towards the Jews did not originate with any mental illness he may have suffered. In fact, his attitude was no different from that of the majority of Palestinians and the rest of the Arab peoples. His ideas were entirely rational within the norms of the Arab world. As Glubb Pasha, an Arab military leader and British officer (and no lover of Jews) reported in 1945, "They (the Arabs) were painfully conscious of their immaturity, their weakness and their backwardness. They show all the instability and emotionalism of the adolescent (characterized by) their touchiness and …readiness to take offense at any sign of condescension by their elders. Slights gave rise to outbursts of temper and violent defiance."

They're still building little Sirhans today. It's a shame but:

"We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us"
- Golda Meir