Bishara Salameh Sirhan, whose son is accused of the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, announced today that he was going to the United States soon to help the son whom, he had said earlier, deserved to be hanged. He also was quoted today as blaming the martyred Senator for his own death because of his “anti-Arab statements.” The former Jerusalem civil servant and not explain why he had abruptly changed his mind regarding his son and the late Senator he had formerly extolled, nor did he say who was providing the funds for the journey from his West Bank village to Los Angeles. He charged yesterday that Mr. Kennedy had “insulted the Arabs enough.”
(In New York, the Wall Street Journal editorially rejected contentions that the assassination was a further indication of moral collapse in this nation and termed the contention “nonsense.” The paper said, “it is particularly strange since, as it happens, Robert Kennedy was killed by an alien, an Arab fanatic living here. The assassination was a gruesome act of violence bred of violence – but it was a violence primarily of the Middle East, not the United States.
(Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr., president of the Holy Land Center, deplored, in a letter to the New York Times today the “unfortunate implication that this beastly act had some connection with the Arab-Israeli conflict.” He expressed concern that the assassination had been followed by many anti-Arab statements on the streets of New York and said “we cannot and should not generalize the guilt, neither toward the people of Jordan and the Arabs.” The center promotes Middle East tourism and is primarily supported by Jordan.)
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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.
