Sirhan B. Sirhan was recently recommended for parole by a two-person panel of California's parole board. The decision still has to be approved by the full board, and it can be rejected by California's governor (still Gavin Newsome, as of this writing). Sirhan, of course, assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, only hours after Kennedy won the California presidential primary, perhaps changing the course of U.S. history. He has come up for parole fifteen times previously, and was always denied. This time, however, Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon did not object; in fact, his office did not even participate in the hearing, saying that the role of the prosecutor ends with conviction (presumably following all affirmed appeals).
Sirhan's stated motive for the assassination was RFK's support for Israel. In 1989, he told David Frost, in a televised interview, ''My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians."
In her pitch for parole, Sirhan's attorney Angela Berry, an Encino, California, solo practitioner, described him as a refugee who had "witnessed atrocities most of us only see in movies or in our worst nightmares."
That is bunk. Sirhan was born in East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Jordan in 1948, making him a Jordanian citizen from the age of four. He came to the U.S. in 1956, at age 12, more than a decade before the Six Day War. According to Wikipedia, Sirhan's mother said that he was traumatized by seeing the death of his brother, "who was run over by a Jordanian military vehicle that was swerving to escape Israeli gunfire." There is no way to know whether, or how much, fighting Sirhan observed as a four year old child in 1948, or whether his mother was just trying to generate sympathy in advance of a parole hearing. But, even if that happened, it could hardly be called an "atrocity."
Angela Berry succeeded on behalf of Sirhan where many others had failed, so there is no faulting her advocacy. But it is typical of the current anti-Israel smear campaign that the characterization of so-called "atrocities" occurred so easily to her as an available argument, and has been reported without question in the press.
The length of American prison sentences is barbaric. Sirhan has been incarcerated for 53 years, as a model prisoner, which has certainly been long enough to ensure public safety. He seems to represent no threat to anyone, and he has repeatedly expressed regret for the assassination and a commitment to living a peaceful life. The parole panel did the right thing by supporting his release, in my opinion, and I hope the recommendation is accepted by the full board and the governor (recognizing that the latter is unlikely to happen before the recall election next month).
It is most troubling, to say the least, that the claim of Israeli atrocities, although clearly nonexistent in this context, comes so trippingly easy to counsel, and passes without objection by anyone else.
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