The Israel Government is angered over an editorial which appeared in the Paris newspaper Le Monde last week and seemed to excuse Sirhan Sirhan, the Arab accused of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, because as “one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been forced to leave their homes and find refuge in a strange land” he was incensed by the late Senator’s friendly attitude toward Israel. Foreign Minister Abba Eban said yesterday that the Le Monde editorial was the “most shocking literature of incitement.” Replying to questions at a press conference. Mr. Eban said that the basis of the Le Monde editorial is “appalling.” The paper claimed that the Kennedy murder by a Palestinian nationalist had a “symbolic value” one year after Israel’s victory and 20 years after its establishment.
Israeli intelligence and police authorities were reported Friday to be preparing a dossier for the F.B.I, following a request by the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv for any information available about the accused assassin of Sen. Kennedy. The dossier may include information on possible El Fatah involvement in the assassination. Sirhan was born in East Jerusalem in 1944 when Palestine was under British Mandate rule and moved to the U.S. with his family in 1957. His father still lives in the West Bank town of Al Tabiyeh.
(Christian Science Monitor correspondent John K. Cooley reported from Amman yesterday that El Fatah terrorists have been collecting funds from the Arab community in Los Angeles where there is “much sympathy and support” for their cause. The information was contained in several personal letters received by Jordanians from Los Angeles, Mr. Cooley wrote. He also quoted the Algiers bureau of El Fatah as having said about the Kennedy assassination that “all hypotheses about the identity of the criminal are only Machiavellian maneuvers. The murderer can only be an instrument of world Zionism, of capitalism, of the CIA, aimed at the most abject political goals.”
(In London the Guardian reported from Beirut yesterday that Arabs are torn between human and political considerations in the assassination of Sen. Kennedy. They are distressed by the tragedy, and the fact the accused assassin is an Arab has caused serious embarrassment on high Government levels, the Guardian said. But the Arabs also feel that “it should be taken as an indication of the depth of feeling against American policies in the Middle East.” There is a general feeling that America is less likely than ever “to take a just and honest view of the Arab-Israel conflict,” the paper said. The Guardian dispatch however quoted Lebanese workman as saying “if this Palestinian (Sirhan) wanted to help his country why didn’t he go back and join the El Fatah?” That, said the Guardian, is probably as good a summary as any of Arab feeling).
Robert Kennedy Yarhi was the name given the infant son of Saadya Yarhi who was born in the Beersheba hospital maternity ward on Thursday, the day Sen. Kennedy died. American Ambassador Walworth Barbour has been invited to the child’s circumcision ceremony.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
