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In June 1968, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan B. Sirhan assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, marking yet another killing in a decade haunted by political violence. As he was being subdued, Sirhan shouted, “I can explain. I did it for my country,” by which he meant Palestine. On trial, he testified that his motives included opposition to Zionism, with particular anger directed toward Kennedy because of the senator’s call for arms sales to Israel. Despite Sirhan’s confessions, the significance of the Arab-Israeli conflict to the slaying largely escaped notice—or was actively obscured.
I Did It for My Country is a revelatory account of Sirhan and the political dimensions of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It illuminates Sirhan’s Palestinian background, war-torn childhood, and experience of displacement, considering to what extent trauma contributed to his mental health problems. Michael R. Fischbach uncovers how prominent actors—from the United States and Middle Eastern governments to Jewish and Arab American groups—deliberately depoliticized the assassination by downplaying Sirhan’s grievances about American support for Israel. He also examines why US authorities investigated possible Arab co-conspirators and explores how Palestinians understood Sirhan’s action, as well as how Sirhan has maintained his Palestinian nationalism during his decades in prison. Drawing on in-depth archival research—including FBI and CIA documents—this book pinpoints a missed opportunity to consider how US foreign policy could affect domestic security.
— Terry H. Anderson, author of The Sixties
It has been almost sixty years since Sirhan Sirhan murdered Robert F. Kennedy in a cramped corridor of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel. But with his revelatory reconstruction of Sirhan’s tortured life and the fierce politics it produced, Fischbach makes that horrific moment stunningly relevant. Read this important book for the tragic history it uncovers—and the light it sheds on our own torturous times.
— Kevin Boyle, author of The Shattering: America in the 1960s
Fischbach’s carefully researched and enlightening study of Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Robert F. Kennedy uncovers surprising connections to US-Middle East relations. Especially striking are his findings on the competing efforts, in the Middle East and the United States alike, to amplify—or to bury—Sirhan’s Palestinian political motives.
— Pamela Pennock, author of Rethinking Arab American Activism
Michael R. Fischbach again demonstrates that he is one of today’s finest historians, no matter the subject or period. He delivers a major revelation: that Sirhan Sirhan was a dedicated Palestinian nationalist who murdered Robert F. Kennedy in the name of the Palestinian cause. With unrattled poise, he presents the assassination as part of the long arc of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which continues to destabilize the world.
— Jeremy Varon, author of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror
Preface
Introduction
1. The Nakba and the Young Refugee
2. The American Dream?
3. Kennedy and the Angry Palestinian
4. Sirhan on Trial
5. Violence and Trauma
6. An Arab Connection?
7. Attempts to Politicize the Assassination
8. Depoliticization of the Assassination
9. The Palestinian Embrace of Sirhan
10. Political Prisoner?
Conclusion: Echoes
Acknowledgments
A Note on Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index